Turn You Inside Out
by ThereIsMoreThanOneOfEverything
Summary: An AU story set in a world where Pickett didn't hear Tom Friendly on the walkie until it was too late, with terrible consequences. Now Jack's trying to save his friends, alter fate, find a way back to Sawyer. This time: There's an end to every journey, and Jack and James find theirs.
1. So Sure, So Broken

**Note:** This is a slash story, in case you missed it in the intro tags. It begins a couple of weeks after the events of Season 3, Episode 6, "I Do," in a world where Pickett didn't hear Tom Friendly on the walkie-talkie until it was too late.

* * *

Jack's eyes opened to an almost dark room, a little city light filtering through the curtains along with the sounds of a street cleaner and a siren.

He stood, looked down blearily at pajama bottoms he hadn't realized he was wearing and ran a hand over them. They were grey pima cotton and he thought that he liked them; he wished he could keep them. Then he laughed softly at the utter irrelevance of pajama bottoms.

Pulling the curtains aside revealed a thirty-story-high view of Times Square in the dark: a sea of video billboards, the Coke sign, the streets as empty as they get.

"Marriott Marquis," he mumbled; walked over to the desk, saw it was 6:15 a.m.

His wallet was there and he flicked through the cash, receipts. A rental agreement folder showed he'd gotten his car in L.A. He picked up a lanyard, saw an I.D. for a conference hanging from it. A program for the event was there too, and he felt a jab of concern as he read it, then sighed in relief: he was just attending.

Half an hour later he was standing on Broadway in a strong wind, turning up his coat collar, watching the sky turn from black to grey. He ran through the call history on his phone while he waited for the walk sign to change, playing back some of the messages and thankful for his habit of never deleting anything.

"Well," he said under his breath, "Here we go. Where are you this time?"

* * *

Sawyer found him this time.

Jack had walked nearly thirty blocks, looking in bodegas and restaurant windows until he gave up and took a table at a diner.

The waiter had just dropped off his coffee when Sawyer stepped in the door. He was wearing a dark grey suit, carrying a messenger bag. He looked well, strong, on a mission, and the combination made Jack's heart jump and sink at the same time. He felt a familiar, irrational desire to be somewhere else or maybe invisible, but at least he knew what that was about now: It was the wrenching not-knowing of which Sawyer he was getting.

Then Jack saw he'd been spotted, too, and he was relieved at the way it made Sawyer stop flat. He watched him look back toward the door before moving forward again, stopping next to his table.

"We talking or not?"

It had clearly cost Sawyer some effort to keep his voice detached and flat, even for those few words. There was relief in that too. Jack blinked, nodded, pointing his chin at the seat across from him.

"You fly out here for work?" Sawyer asked.

"Conference, yes, but I drove. I guess I'm not ready to fly yet. You?"

"Business. Been flying all the time lately."

Jack's eyes asked him for more and Sawyer slowly shook his head.

"You do not want to know. Unless you actually want to be an accomplice."

Sawyer was still standing and Jack realized it was because he'd been fighting off his own uncertainty. Now he was smiling down at the simple sight of Jack in a restaurant drinking coffee. Jack made a face, shaking his head with the trace of an eye roll so slight almost no one else would have noticed it, a look telling him to stop it and sit.

It hit him, too, that most con men probably have angelic smiles; they need them for their work.

Sawyer tossed the bag into the booth and sat.

"How are you?" Jack asked.

"Never better."

Sawyer grabbed the salt shaker from near the wall, pushing it along the top of the table from hand to hand, and Jack recognized it as a kind of a 'tell.' Sawyer sensed it too, his eyes shooting up to see if he'd been caught, flipping it away from him but Jack had looked down just in time.

"You?"

"I'm okay," Jack said. "Today, I'm okay."

Sawyer nodded, straight-faced.

"Well you're king of the world," he said. "'Cause today's the only sure thing we've got."

They had breakfast. Jack said as little as he could; asked as much as he dared. He found out they were fifteen months home this time and that just five of them had made it back. He wanted to pull at the details some more, find whatever it was that had separated Sawyer from the rest of them- but he knew going too fast might keep him from the more important answers forever.

Then the check came and they both threw some money at it. Jack wasn't sure which was worse: not finding him at all, or finding him and saying goodbye half an hour later.

"James, I…"

"Go to your meeting and I'll go to mine," Sawyer said, and Jack saw he was looking at him now in a way he hadn't thought to hope for: the one that made him feel like they were the only two living things in the room, or maybe the city.

"Got a phone with you?" Sawy er was putting away his wallet.

"Yes." Jack fished it out of his coat, dialed the number Sawyer rattled off for him. They heard Sawyer's phone ringing as he picked up his things and Jack flipped open the phone and then hung up.

"There," Sawyer said. "Now if you get a better offer you can wave me off."

"Funny," Jack said, staying in his seat. "Hotel's on Broadway at 45th."

He expected him to turn and walk, but Sawyer leaned down, his face near Jack's ear like he had something to say he didn't want to share with the rest of the room.

"Don't spend all goddamn day fretting on it, okay? I will show up."

Jack exhaled a short, silent laugh that got cut off abruptly as Sawyer dipped his head down and ran his barely open mouth across Jack's, one very slow swipe left to right, darting the tip of his tongue in and out for a millisecond as he went. Jack pulled back, a little shocked; saw the challenging glint in Sawyer's eyes inches from his and thought, 'yeah, you're right, screw it.'

He reached twice as hard in with his own mouth, his hand going to the back of Sawyer's neck—a reflex—to draw him in and keep him there.

Sawyer stepped back eventually.

"If I haven't said so, it's great to be on the same island with you again, Jack," he said.

Then he did leave.

Jack stared out the window for a while before walking back through a rainstorm to the business center at the hotel. He Googled 'Oceanic 815,' and then searched his own name, James', Kate's, John's, Hurley's, and the rest; pulling information, going through the drill. He thought about dialing what he recognized as probably Kate's number, but he didn't.

At noon he checked into the conference to avoid accidentally closing his eyes.

* * *

He was walking around his hotel room a few hours later, pulling off his shoes, prying apart his cuff links when he heard and then saw his phone jumping lightly on the nightstand.

He flipped it open, pressed the button to read the message: "Want you in my mouth so bad I can barely walk. Swear I can taste you."

He stared at the screen, smiling; felt his heart rate ramping up as he keyed in:

"WHO THE HELL IS THIS?"

"Funny," he read. "In the lobby. Room #?"

Jack keyed it in, and waited, eyes on the screen.

"Touch yourself and tell me about it."

He complied, biting his lip, sighing, and now it wasn't just his heart rate; he could feel his nervous system shifting into gear, his breathing shallowing out. He imagined it was the heel of Sawyer's hand pressing into him, his fingers rubbing.

"So hard," he wrote, "Can I fuck your mouth?"

"Elevator," he read, "You goddamn well better."

Jack barely noticed setting the phone on the dresser; walking to the door. It started buzzing again but he stayed where he was, waiting, and when he heard Sawyer on the other side he opened it.

Sawyer dropped his bag, set his jacket down, and then his hands were in Jack's shirt; at his belt. Jack pushed him away and when that didn't slow him down he held onto his upper arms, stepping back. It felt so perfect until it felt wrong, almost like he was using James. But he had no way to tell him so, or even start to explain why.

Then he realized he was fighting a battle he didn't want to win, and he stopped.

As he gave in, he took a second to watch Sawyer's face, the narrow blue slits of his eyes, the perfect flush of pink over his cheekbones that was partly about windburn from the walk there and part anticipation. Seeing it all happening drew the last of the air out of Jack's lungs.

"Slow down." He reached in and bit at Sawyer's mouth, caught his lower lip, drawing a pained and impatient sound from him. "Please."

"Aw no," Sawyer moved an inch, motioning for Jack to step out of his pants, forcing them down, dodging Jack as he kept at Sawyer with his mouth, his teeth.

"I see that look. You need to get philosophical about this? Fine - later. All I want out of you right now is half-crazy begging."

Jack laughed, still breathless; saw the smirk on his face. Then Sawyer was sinking to the floor, his damned shoes still on his feet. The sight of him going down this way—pressed, smooth, the hair Jack was running his fingers through clean and dry and perfect—sent a wave of amazement through him; a shock as stunning as the first time he'd ever watched Sawyer take him in his mouth.

He fought back a moan as Sawyer's lips closed over him, sucking; his tongue switching between firm and a soft, dancing motion; his head rising and falling. Sawyer's hands were on his hips, digging, and there was no buildup, no tease; just an overwhelming feeling of being consumed and obsessed on second after second after second. Jack tugged harder at his hair, ran a hand over his face, pulled out of him completely.

"Stop." He heard his voice shaking as he ran hands over Sawyer's shirt, wishing he could feel his skin. "Don't make me come standing up."

He fell into bed and got a momentary break while he watched Sawyer take his clothes off and join him, kissing his stomach and both hipbones on the way back down.

"Sorry." Sawyer took him in one hand and gave a few slow tugs, reaching down to nip at the inside of his thigh. Jack's lower back arched involuntarily and he let go of a long, tight, aching groan, twisting, dropping f-bombs as he kept biting, pulling. "Forgot you hate that. Hold on, now."

And then Sawyer went so deep down on him that Jack swore he could feel the back of his mouth, his throat, and he had no choice; didn't ask; started pushing and turning them both sideways so Sawyer was almost underneath him.

"This what you wanted?" Jack? watched himself moving in and out of Sawyer, reached to hold his face, feeling his mouth from both sides. "This what you've been thinking about all day?"

Jack was pushing harder into him than he ever had, and Sawyer was struggling to keep up now, his muffled sounds of distressed pleasure making it harder to hold on.

"You have no idea." Jack held the back of Sawyer's head, keeping him from pulling back, barely able to get the words out. "How bad … it's been. No idea..."

He came with a yell that was close to a scream, then pulled out and fell on his back, throbbing. Sawyer was up over him almost immediately, his knees digging into the bed on either side, and Jack started shifting down but felt him stopping him.

"Stay here." He wrapped Jack's hand around him, his eyes wide, empty, looking drugged. "Fucking love hearing you lose it," he said, "Me turning you inside out. That sick?"

Sawyer swayed over Jack as he started pushing, his head dropping a touch, and all Jack could see was his nose, the curve of his chin, his mouth wet, hanging open slightly.

"I knew that," he said, "Always knew, every time. Is it sick I'm glad?"

He slid a few inches, reached up, kissing Sawyer deeply, keeping the kiss slow as his hand moved faster. They went that way for a while—longer than Jack expected—and then he could feel Sawyer start shaking before he broke the kiss, freezing over him with a long, strangled cry that went up and down and faded away as he fell next to Jack.

_I_ have no idea?" Sawyer said eventually between deep breaths, coming out of it. "I almost made three really expensive mistakes today because I ran into you in a diner. _You_ have no idea."

* * *

An hour later they'd found a bar that served food; one that wasn't too empty or too busy. They both had their eyes on the pre-season baseball game on the screens, waiting for dinner to arrive. Neither could have told you the score.

"Does it feel weird to you?" Jack asked, "Public places? So many people?"

"Yeah." Sawyer shrugged. "Sometimes it's fine for a while, 'til it isn't. What's worse is the food."

"I noticed," Jack said, "Huge amounts of food. It's really striking; you smell it everywhere here."

"You still with Kate?" Sawyer asked, and even though it was a sharp left turn, Jack had been expecting the question. His eyes stayed on the TVs as he drank, shook his head.

"We haven't talked in about five months," he said, remembering his trip through his voicemail earlier, seeing her number on his phone three times a day, twice a day, then once a week and then never after October.

"Hate to say it," Sawyer paused. "But I told you she'd peel off."

"I remember." Jack looked over at him, and Sawyer thought he'd never known anyone else who could smile and look so sad in the same second on a regular basis. "I remember the day you told me that. I got very pissed off at you."

"I know why you think I disappeared the minute we made it to an airport," Sawyer said. "You thought I wasn't convinced it could would work; the three of us. That wasn't it."

"So what was it?" Jack hadn't expected this: any details to hold on to, to take back.

"I left because I promised I'd change careers and there's no way in hell I will."

"Can't or don't want to?" Jack asked.

"Both," Sawyer said. "Neither. Whatever."

"What would it take?" Jack asked. "What would you need, for that to happen?"

"A miracle, maybe." Sawyer finished his drink and waved his glass to get the bartender's attention. "But I think we used ours up getting out of there. And money. Enough money to stop feeling chased, I guess."

"Like if we'd sued and won," Jack offered, trying to draw out just a little more information. He could feel they were close to that tipping point where Sawyer would go from solemn into morose—storm clouds over his head—and he couldn't face it.

"Yeah, right. The opposite of what we actually did; sneaking around like we should feel guilty, like we were going into hiding instead of going home. I needed to get away from that, too. Sorry, no insult intended and I understand why you all made the decisions you did for her, for the rest of them, but…."

The bartender took the glass from Sawyer's hand. "Bourbon, rocks," he said, then he stared down at the bar, digging at the wood absently with a fingernail.

"You in New York because you knew I'd be here?" Sawyer asked. "Have you been looking for me? Or is it just a coincidence?"

"No," Jack said. "I didn't know. But wherever I am I look for you."

"Yeah, and there's the other problem. I told you I don't have that in me. She was okay with it, why can't you be?"

And once again, the Sawyer who had looked so sure, so whole at 7:00 a.m. had just shown him again where he was broken; in exactly the same place as every time he found him, any shape he found him in.

"Don't sweat it," Jack said. "It's okay. Forget it even came up."

He felt Sawyer staring at him as the bartender dropped their plates in front of them and Jack nodded their thanks.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Jack?" Sawyer asked when the man had walked away. Jack grinned, didn't look up. "I'm not kidding; when have you ever passed up the opportunity to talk something like this to absolute death?"

"Now," Jack said, "I'm passing it up now."

Sawyer was relieved to hear it said with an edge of sarcasm.

"It's a new policy on my part. Eat, so we can get out of here and go back for round two. I think I owe you."

"Yeah, you do." Sawyer said it with so much gusto that Jack laughed out loud.

"Good to hear you laugh," Sawyer said.

"It's good to laugh. I haven't in a long time."

* * *

Just after 3:00 a.m. Sawyer woke up and saw Jack staring at the ceiling.

"Can't sleep?" he asked, his voice thick.

"I was out for awhile," Jack lied.

"Up," Sawyer tapped his shoulder and Jack pushed back toward the headboard. Sawyer slid, turned sideways, threw an arm over him. He settled in, sighing. "Better?"

Jack fought it for a bit, until his eyes burned and he had no choice – he had to close them.

* * *

"Jack." He felt fingers digging into his shoulders in a familiar way; not afraid to demand his attention. "Wake up."

He sat up, shaking, sucked in hot, stagnant air. The way the light was hitting his tent he could tell it was barely morning but it was already smoldering out; the start of a long, dank day.

"Okay." Jack ran a hand over his head, looked at Kate, gauging things. "What's wrong?"

"Hurley's not feeling well. They sent me to get you; make sure he's okay."

He was nodding, standing, searching for a pair of pants to put on. Kate sat back, looking as concerned about him as she was about Hurley.

"You always wake up like a confused six-year-old," she said, "But lately… it's like you're somewhere we can't even get to you. I understand why, but I've gotta say, it's scaring me."

"Don't worry about it," he said, pulling jeans over his boxers, "I'm fine."

"Sure." Kate called him on it. "Of course. You're fine two weeks after they shot him in the head?"

Jack gave up, sat down, fastening his belt.

"And you had to watch it happen," he said. "Because I didn't act fast enough."

"You have nothing to apologize for." She was calm, but leaning toward him, almost in his face. "You held up your end of the bargain. You did the surgery." She stopped, started again. "Even after they killed him, you finished it to get me away."

She sat back, knees against her chest. "When are you going to stop beating yourself up?"

"It'll take longer than a few weeks," Jack said, looked down, feeling bad at the way her frown deepened when she heard it. "Look, if I tell you what's happening to me lately, you might think I'm crazy."

"Isn't that a sign you're sane?" Kate asked.

Jack got up, pulled open the tent and waved her out in front of him.

"Yeah, I've heard that theory. Can I talk to you about this later?" he asked. "I need to think about how to phrase it. Even with you."

"Whenever you're ready," Kate said, pulled him toward Hurley's tent.

He followed her, turning his thoughts to the day. In the back of his mind, he wondered which James he'd get next.


	2. Control and When to Lose It

_The James he got next leaned over him and slid a necktie through the two already tight around his wrists, pulled it under the rail at the bottom of the headboard and knotted it. Jack felt his arms jump. It drew a shiver from him and made him go harder than he'd been a second before._

"_You know that won't keep me here," Jack said when he could again, his breathing shallow, rings under his eyes._

"_Sure, I know. It's symbolic," James murmured, dropping back as he observed his own handiwork, making sure it was holding fast. "You're a guy who can appreciate sub-text, aren't you?"_

_Jack felt James hard against his stomach, then against his hip when James shifted again, and he bit back a surprised sound. It was a little stunning how the sensation and not being able to do anything about it made his body want to push up, reach for him._

_"I know, I know...be patient..." James reached in to kiss him, soft, deep and greedy, all outside the lines. "Think of this as a going away present, okay? And don't hesitate to beg and moan; I wanna hear it."_

* * *

Jack had opened his eyes three mornings ago: His own apartment. A phone was ringing, but the sight of his room and the feeling of being in his own bed were so overwhelmingly confusing that it took a few rings to move, to answer.

"I'm losing it." James' voice: Shaking, barely recognizable. "I know I said I'd stick around for this and I thought I could, but Jack, I've gotta take off now..."

"Where are you?"

"What the hell do you mean? I'm at the hotel you left us all at a couple hours ago; the place they put everyone who doesn't live here who didn't get hauled off to prison by her damned wrists."

"Can you find your way here?" Jack was up, walking circles.

"Yes…" James paused. "The rental car has that GPS thing."

"Don't run. Please."

"I won't," he said, "… at least not 'til we talk."

* * *

_James was picking a spot, his mouth making small, wet circles over Jack's neck, down one shoulder. He grazed Jack's collarbone with his lips, stopped, bit as Jack gasped and tried to pull away; bit harder until Jack said 'fuck' very loudly. _

"_Who did that?" James ran a finger over the growing bruise. "Marked you? Bastard."_

He had walked into Jack's apartment half an hour after the call.

"It's a lot like I pictured it." James stopped near the living room. "Your place."

Then, to Jack's confusion, James walked to him, hitched his head over Jack's shoulder, wrapped his arms low around his waist. He'd never touched him purely for comfort that way and the still, warm weight of James against him felt so good, but so strange. Then Jack noticed him shaking lightly.

"What's wrong? What's got you so shaken up?"

"You think you know me..."

"Of course I know you." Jack stepped back, tried to get him to return his gaze. "How much more can there be to know?"

James exhaled a dark sound at the question and the wavering note in Jack's voice as he asked it. Then his chin was back over Jack's shoulder again, avoiding his eyes.

"I killed two people: One in Australia, one after. Shot one. Strangled the other."

The way they were standing, Jack could feel the vibrations of the words against him and it made it harder to disbelieve.

"Oh." One of his arms fell, the other held fast to James' back.

"Those government people quizzing us about the crash tomorrow; I know we can't sue for damages 'til we get past them and everyone agreed to do their part… but I can't pull it off,." James walked to the couch, slumping on it, one hand on his head like it hurt. "They'll connect the dots on where I was and when. And I can't go back to prison. Swear that'd kill me."

"It'll be okay," Jack said. "I'll make sure they don't go near things you don't want to say. And by the way, they're investigating a plane crash, not us. Come get some sleep or you'll be a wreck in the morning."

* * *

_Jack felt the bed under him and then he didn't. It hit him as James's mouth skimmed over his abs, hands sliding under his hips, pulling him closer._

"_You okay?" James asked, hearing him laughing, gently hysterical._

"_Yeah. I'm floating," Jack said, "over the bed. Been hallucinating. For a while."_

"_Why didn't you tell me before I got you wound?" James kept his arms tight under him, dropped down, licking, teasing the tip of Jack's cock into his mouth with his tongue, sucking, barely, his eyes aimed up, watching._

"_This…" Jack arched into him, his voice shredded from groaning, "Ahhhh... Jesus, this is why… don't stop, harder, please….don't…."_

_James watched Jack twisting, arms straining and releasing, and he made a sound that let Jack know he wasn't going anywhere._

* * *

"How long have we been off the island?" Jack had asked that first morning after James woke up again. Jack was sitting up against the headboard in his boxers and t-shirt, James on his side facing him, fully dressed, looking like he was concerned now about Jack's sanity.

"Today makes three days. Why the hell do you even have to ask…?"

"I'm not the me you got free of it with. I'm still stuck there. Every night when I close my eyes I go somewhere new. I have no idea how it's happening, but I think I'm trying to find a way to get us all home… and a place where you didn't die; where Pickett didn't shoot you in the head at the cages."

Jack stared at the ceiling. It was the first time he'd tried this - telling him - and he felt sure James would think he was crazy and get up and leave him.

"That goddamn place; I swear it's alive." James sat up, looking shaken again, almost back where he was when he'd walked in. "And it's screwing with us."

"You believe me?"

"The guy I killed on the island was the man who took my parents. Also happened to be John Locke's daddy," James said. "After that? Yeah," he huffed. "I believe almost anything's possible."

* * *

_James pulled his mouth off of Jack with a low groan, kissed his way down the inside of one thigh. Jack's hips fell and he was back from the brink, aching._

"_Undo me," Jack whispered between breaths._

"_Workin' on it. How'm I doing?"_

"_No, my hands. I want to touch you."_

"_I know." James's hands slid Jack's legs apart. "How about you let me drive for a while instead? Feel and stop doing. And by the way, thinking is doing, too."_

* * *

"You're different from our him," James had said on the way to the deposition. "Always seemed to me that getting us free was mostly about proving something to himself."

"I've seen a lot he hasn't," Jack said, "Maybe that's why: Like Kate in prison in one world, you in another. Charlie dead sometimes, or Claire looking like the island fried her brain. That's all this week. Ask me about last week…."

James' right hand shifted on the steering wheel, stopped, and then dropped slowly, wrapped itself around Jack's left hand. He stared at that sight: James holding his hand.

"How many times have you been in love?" Jack asked abruptly.

James considered it but didn't answer right away, too busy changing lanes.

"Three," he said eventually. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're different, then, too." Jack turned a smile on him, squinting, then looked away, out the window, shaking his head. "Very different from what I'm used to."

"What you thinking about, doc?"

"How the hell I get back here," he said, "for good. Once I get them home."

"I'd like that." James quirked an eyebrow, showed a bit of the shit-eating grin that used to piss Jack off. "Everyone likes an upgrade."

* * *

"_You tell me if it gets to be too much." James had a hand on Jack's hip. "If it hurts after yesterday…"_

"_No… it's a good burn." Jack huffed out a laugh, then he felt the heel of James' other hand leave his balls, his thumb stroking behind them, a finger pressing inside him lightly. Jack sighed heavily, and James enjoyed that, pushed harder, deeper until he forced small, helpless sounds out of him._

"_Fingers first – one for now. Two when you ask me nice…"_

"What is their goddamn problem?" Jack kicked the row of lockers and got an echoing bang and a clank out of them. Then he did it again.

"Cool it." James stood against the door, eyes half closed as he watched him vent.

The deposition, which did turn out to feel a lot more like an inquisition, had broken for lunch. The most helpful of the people in charge of it had quickly diverted them into a locker room at the federal office building - away from their friends and the investigative team - to allow for the safe blowing off of steam.

"Most of the people we know just found out you spent time in prison from an FBI agent who had no goddamn business telling them." Jack was stabbing a finger toward the hallway behind them, furious. "We just learned that Jin was, what, basically a hit man for his father-in-law?"

"Here's the thing," James said, "You shut them down half a dozen times this morning. They're about done now - they'll file their report and the worst of the nightmare is over. Sure you're a doctor and not a lawyer?"

Jack stared over at him with the anger draining from his face.

"Thank you," James' smile lit his eyes more than his mouth, "for getting them off all of our backs. Now let's focus on finding you some answers, okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"Half a dozen of your friends are anxious to go to dinner later and talk about how to sue Oceanic as a team. They can add to what I know about how we got away. Damn shame Des and his girl took off on their boat so fast, though. She's the one who can tell you exactly how she found us."

"Can we reach them?"

"Sure." James shrugged. "Hurley's the social director. But if they're at sea it might take a while."

Jack looked ready to quit until it hit him.

"There it is," James said. "The light dawning. How long can you stay awake, Jack?"

Dinner was happy-weird, as they all took over one wall of a family Italian restaurant. Jack had never been to a place where so many of them had survived; where he could sit near Charlie and Claire as Claire held Aaron, or watch Sun and Jin tease Sayid about something he'd just said to Shannon. By the time dessert and coffee arrived the last scraps of details he needed were the ones only Desmond and Penny could give him.

"I told them it's urgent. I'm sure they'll call you soon," Hurley said, flipping his phone shut. Jack had been ready to tell Hurley everything, but mercifully he didn't want details.

"Thanks." Jack's eyes were on James at the other end of the table next to Sun and Shannon, the three of them laughing loudly over something Jack and Hurley had missed.

"Glad you guys are talking again," Hurley said, and Jack looked up sharply to see Hurley chuckling. "Listen, man, everyone knows and no one cares, okay? It's just... that blowout you had the other day after Kate got busted, I was afraid we'd never see you two in the same room again."

"Hell," Jack muttered, then remembered to try to draw out more information. "That bad?"

"Uh, I'd say screaming at us all - Sawyer included - that you couldn't wait to see our tail lights and bury yourself in a nice, 80-hour work week is up there."

"That explains some things," Jack murmured, then saw Hurley's confusion. "I… wasn't myself the other night."

"I don't know," Hurley couldn't resist. "Seemed like a classic Jack moment to me."

They were the last to leave, walking across an empty parking lot.

"What happened to Locke here?" Jack asked.

"He stayed. By choice," James said. "I get why Rose and Bernard did, but him? Crazy bastard."

Jack was confused when James walked to the passenger's side with him, until James reached, popping open the button on Jack's suit jacket, finding his hip, then his shirt, pulling it loose. He had Jack disheveled and against the car door in seconds.

"Sorry." James leaned in, kissing him lightly, then harder, one hand grabbing the shirt, using it to pull him closer. "Can't wait 'til we get somewhere. Been dying for this since you started kicking those poor, defenseless lockers."

"Why are you apologizing?" Jack relaxed into him, angling his hips, and James' mouth was on his again, his thumb pressing along the top of Jack's jaw, silently telling him to give way. Jack loved their system of whoever started the kiss ran it; loved it even more now feeling James take what he offered the second he offered it. Then the familiar, nearly perfect slip and slide of tongues and teeth changed, and Jack wondered how it was you could taste the goodbye in a goodbye kiss.

"What the hell?" James said when Jack pushed him away.

"You're leaving. You were always going to leave after the hearing," Jack said. "That's why you were at the hotel and not with me."

"Have to." James had turned slightly away from him, head down, voice flat, deliberate. "You wouldn't understand the whys of it, dropping in here the way you did. It's better anyway no one needs to watch me stumble through figuring out what the hell I do next."

Jack ducked his head back toward him, looking up at him.

"Do you really believe that? At all?"

"I don't know." James saw Jack's eyes - dark, pained - daring him to look away, and he did.

He heard rather than saw Jack open the car door, getting in.

"Great. Drive me home before you go? Maybe I'll luck out, fall asleep on the way."

"You can't, you have to wait for your phone call…" James walked around the front of the car and heard the emptiest laugh he could remember out of Jack.

"What's it to you, Sawyer?"

Jack didn't see him stop walking, nearly drop the keys, look up at the sky with his jaw working.

* * *

_Jack was twisting again, writhing from the hips down now. _

"_Too much." He felt a shock at how frantic and jagged his own voice sounded. "Gonna lose me. I'll pass out..."_

_James had three fingers deep inside him, had spent minutes teasing him with them and with his tongue, his teeth, moving constantly from place to place but never too far from those fingers. He lifted his head now, focused on pushing harder, faster._

"_You can take it... almost there, it'll be so good, I promise, stay with me."_

* * *

"You've got buyer's remorse," Jack said as James drove.

"What?"

"You let a few of us see into you, think of you as ours, and now that we're back you can't stand it. That's why you're leaving."

"You have no idea what you're goin' on about," James said.

"Sure I do," Jack said, not as angry, weary. "Same thing over and over. Thought it was different here. It's not."

It was only fifteen miles, but it was a long drive.

"Come in with me," Jack tried again in the parking lot.

"I want to. Can't."

"Yes, you can." Jack's voice was approaching its highest level of pissed off sarcasm as he bit out every word. "Know how? You take the keys, get out of the car and walk with me. You wait while I unlock the door and you go to my room and get in my goddamned bed and you stay. It's really simple."

James was laughing now, his head against the headrest.

"Haven't heard that tone in awhile," he said. "Stubborn son of a bitch. Go home, Jack. Keep your phone handy. Get your people out of there safe."

Jack had only been in his apartment a second, the door had barely shut when it hit him.

He went back downstairs fast, found the rental car still there, ignition off, James sitting in the driver's seat with one hand on the wheel. Jack got in and saw the misery in James' eyes, how awful it was for him to hurt this way in front of anybody.

"You're leaving because he told you to," Jack said. "Did he fucking tell you to go away?"

"Yeah." It took James a while to get the word out. "I was ready to drive off and I realized you might figure it out. Thought I'd give you five minutes—tell you not to kick yourself for something you're not responsible for."

"I'd never do that to you," Jack said.

"I know. I've seen that every time you looked at me today."

"And you won't stay… because you don't think I can get back here?" Jack sat back.

"You don't even know how you're here now." James was smiling as he said it, but near tears suddenly too, and Jack flinched to see it. "In the past four months, how many good things have happened? One – getting home. The rest has all been death and misery and shit we'll never understand, so no I'm not optimistic. And I don't want to be here to see you look at me cold and dismissive again."

"Get over it," Jack snapped, but in a tone meant to make the smile win and push the sad away. It worked. He moved over a little, got in James' face. "You're the toughest person I know. Hell, I keep losing you every day and I haven't lost my mind yet. I'm getting there, though."

"You always need to have a better answer." James reached a hand behind Jack, pulled him in, and this time when he kissed him it was a slow, patient kind of hungry. It felt like the kind of kiss he'd thought about, been wanting to give Jack for a long time.

"No goodbye in that," Jack said when James pulled away again.

"No. I'll stay. At least until your phone rings."

The second day was all about the phone: Making sure it was charged, checking that it was on, testing the ringer.

"If you keep playing with that," Sawyer took it out of Jack's hand, set it to the far side of the kitchen counter, went back to making coffee, always more coffee, "You're gonna miss our mutual friends when they finally dial you."

"I know." Jack was next to him, his back against the counter. "Part of me can't wait, the rest of me doesn't want it to ring today."

"Better hope it does." James popped the top back on the can of coffee, handed it to him, nodding toward the freezer for him to put it away. "Coffee, water and NSAIDs will only keep you on your feet so long. Eventually you'll sleep whether you want to or not."

They killed some time at a grocery store, and that was fine until it wasn't, when Jack noticed James looking pale, almost green.

"You okay?"

"I gotta get out of here. Wait for you at the car?"

"Sure," Jack said.

Later, they were back at the apartment, on the couch, Jack sitting with his feet on the coffee table, James' head on a pillow against Jack's leg.

"Sorry, but you have to come right out and ask for things," Jack was saying. "I can't read your mind… so don't get annoyed at me, just ask for what you want."

"Fine." James raised one arm straight up, palm open. "Can I please have the remote?"

"No problem." Jack handed it over, running his fingers through James' hair. He was waiting for an objection, but he wasn't getting one.

"Are you sure," James flicked through channels, "All this is real? Not something playing out in your head?"

"Is that why you left the store?" Jack's fingers stopped and then pressed, reassuring.

"Yes. Started wondering if nothing's real. Pathetic, huh?"

"No, not pathetic. But trust me, okay? It's all real. That's about the only thing I know for sure: Good, bad and horrible - it's all real."

"Something else I want." James stopped flicking and flipped on his back.

"What?"

"I want you: Want to be inside you, come inside you. Can I have that?"

Jack took the remote, tossed it away and got up from the couch, pulling James up with him.

"Does now work for you?"

The phone was left behind, forgotten. It didn't matter: It didn't ring.

* * *

_James only pulled away from him for a second, to move up, but there was a feeling of no contact anywhere and it felt like an hour. _

"_Fuck if you aren't beautiful when you're about to lose it." James was pulling the ties loose, rubbing Jack's arms, his wrists, and Jack dropped into him._

"_Now, okay? Need you so bad…"_

"_Now," James said, "Sorry, didn't mean to tease you so hard. Couldn't stop..."_

* * *

Jack started hallucinating the third morning: Birds, first, swooping through the kitchen as he made more coffee. Then the sound of frogs and crickets and fish swimming in the sink in water that wasn't there. The water and the fish winked out like a switch had flipped. The frogs and crickets faded.

James found him leaning against the counter, gasping, head down.

"Aw, hell no." He pulled Jack toward the bedroom. "Unacceptable. Time for sleep…"

"No." Jack stopped them both. "It's okay. One more day."

Food helped, then James drove them to the beach where they walked the shoreline.

"The sand on this beach isn't like most ocean sand. It's heavier. Reminds me of lake sand, of North Carolina," James said.

"Lake Summit?"

"How'd you come up with that?" James stopped flat. "Used to go there summers with my aunt and uncle."

"It's the only place I've gone more than once: Three times now. I wake up in this house; not big, kind of old, but good old, you know? There's a dock out to the lake, nothing else around."

"When were you going to tell me that?"

"I never see you there." Jack shrugged. "I figured it was one of the futures where… you aren't."

"Maybe it's where I settle. I think if anything's changing for me, everything has to."

"So go find it. Buy it," Jack said. James nodded, walking again.

"Where you're going back to…" James started to ask, hesitated. "Did I… was it fast?"

Now it was Jack stopping.

"Very fast," he said. "Kate said you were gone in a second."

"That's good to know," James said, relief in his voice until he saw Jack fold almost in half, bracing, turning away as he stood up again. "Aw, crap - sorry, wasn't thinking…." James drew him in, and Jack buried his face in the crook of James' neck, breathing in the smell of his shirt, his skin. "Hell, I'm sorry."

_James pushed in with a smooth, deliberate motion that made Jack ripple, the middle of his back lifting off the bed and then falling, his shoulders rising and sinking, his head dropping to one side. _

* * *

"_We good, babe?"_

"_Ah, God, yes," Jack panted, pushed his hips forward then settled in, the muscle around James' cock pulsing, in and out of Jack's control. "I could get… so addicted to this."_

"_I already am." James angled, started pushing, his mouth above Jack's ear. "Take me for a ride, okay? Make yourself come first, wanna feel it happen while I fuck you hard…"_

_Jack had already been reaching between them, his fingers on his twitching, aching cock, and those few words - the way James' voice was going harsh and needy and tight - finished him off. It felt like hitting a wall, and he groaned over and over, bucking so hard he lifted them both up, felt James driving into him._

"_That's it, give it up… fuck, Jack, so good it hurts… want this again... want this forever…"_

* * *

Jack's phone rang as they walked back into the apartment from the beach. He looked at the number and over to James as he answered it.

"Hello? Yeah, hi, Desmond, thanks for calling…"

James walked to the shower to wash the beach away, give him some space. A quarter of an hour later Jack went to his room to see him sprawled out, naked, reading glasses on his nose, face in a book.

"You're shameless." Jack grinned, ran a finger up James thigh, set the phone on the nightstand.

"My best feature."

"One of them."

"They tell you what you need to know? Enough to help everyone, get you back here?"

"I hope so," Jack said, walking around and crawling onto the other side of the bed. "It's not the advice I expected at all; not even close. I've been focused on getting everyone away, but well…. Desmond has some experience with his consciousness being where it shouldn't. He learned to control it. He thinks I can too, over time."

"And you can use that to do what exactly?" James put down the book and Jack started to answer, stopped.

"You really want to know? If I tell you more, I think it'll only convince you there's no way I'll pull it off."

"Do you think you can pull it off?" James asked, got a nod back from him. "You're right, then, let's leave it at that. You hurting? Looks it."

"Yeah." Jack's eyes started to close, but he felt James' hand on his forehead, a finger run lightly over his eye, asking him to open them again.

"Can't have you leave me feeling like that," James said.

"I don't want to leave at all."

"I know. But you're about to." he dropped his glasses on the table, walked to the closet. "And you're going with a smile on your face. Tell me which of these ties are your favorites."

"Uh-oh." Jack breathed it, stretching, anticipating and smiling through his exhaustion.

* * *

"_I get it now, why you like that." They were on their sides now, James still catching his breath, Jack watching him._

"_What?" James asked._

"_When you make me lose my mind. Damn, I've never heard you like that before; something taking you over that way."_

"_No one has," James said. "I haven't."_

"_Pretty powerful feeling…"_

"_Yeah, well don't let it go straight to your ego." James inched toward him, tangling their legs, kissed him until he felt Jack stop, getting heavier in his arms. He pulled back to see Jack's eyes half shut, fighting sleep, losing. "Going so soon?"_

_Jack's head moved, a hint of a nod._

"_Good, get to work, okay?"_

_Jack smiled, felt the bed turn to nothing, then to sand, smelled the ocean. He forced his eyes open, saw blue tarp, closed them, opened them to see James' eyes inches away. He tried to hear him over the ocean, caught enough to understand- 'be careful, get back soon… don't make me wait.'_

"_Stay, don't go." He had no idea if James heard him, if he even said it out loud or only thought it. _

* * *

The ocean and the sand and salt won, and he sat up with a start, saw the pitched walls of his tent, heard familiar voices outside, Kate in the corner furthest from him. She was ripping up worn clothes, winding new torches, and the worry didn't leave her face as she watched him but she smiled slightly.

"Thank God; you've been out about fifty hours. They're getting jumpy out there."

Jack dropped back, didn't say anything.

"Bad one this time?" Kate asked.

"Worse," Jack said, "Good one."

"Sorry." She sounded it, knelt up, headed for the tent flap. "I'll go let the rest know you're okay. Learn anything that'll help us?"

"Yeah, I did," Jack said, "Definitely."

"Good, because our truce with the Others? It started falling apart while you were out."

"Hell," Jack said.

"Yup." Kate left the tent.

Jack turned to the wall, closed his eyes, but it was useless. There was no way back - not right now.


	3. Got You Like a Habit

"You're avoiding it." Kate tripped on the surf rolling in and shifted a few steps up toward the sand. "Telling me what you learned. Why?"

They were walking away from the camp to get a few uninterrupted minutes, and she'd already filled Jack in on the latest skirmishes with the Others. They knew they were all being watched and followed, and the latest food drop had been hijacked so it was back to papaya and fish only. They had no idea what the enemy's end game was, just that they were being methodically stressed and that made every insult even harder to take.

Jack looked at her and then up at the sky, shook his head.

"You won't like this," he said.

"Let me guess: Whatever you do, we get home, but I probably end up in prison?" Kate hoped for some sign on his face that she was wrong, but he was staring out at the water now and it was all the confirmation needed.

"It's okay." She tried to sell that she meant it, and Jack pulled her in, struck by how tiny she felt in his arms. "I've been through worse. Not even worried about it anymore."

Kate stayed with him that night for the first time since James died.

"It's supposed to feel normal…" Kate whispered, her back tight against his chest, his arm over her. "Two people, not three. But it doesn't anymore."

She heard his even breathing and smiled at how fast he went out these days.

Jack's eyes opened to the sight of faded, pocked wallpaper, a thin carpet burning the side of his face that was lying on the floor. His head was pounding and he felt nauseated, almost drugged, until he noticed a dull pain near the back of his head and that's when he added up all the symptoms of a concussion.

He pushed against the wall to stand and saw Sawyer face up on the floor in the sunken living space beyond the hotel double beds. Jack made his way to him, his index and middle fingers going straight to a pulse point below Sawyer's jaw. He felt a strong, even beat, saw good color in his face and let out a deep sigh of relief.

"Hey!" Jack slid his hand under Sawyer's head, watched as he started to surface and tried to sit up. "C'mon, wake up – you okay?"

"Stupid son of a bitch." Sawyer fell back, wincing. "You almost got us killed!"

Jack headed for the window and flipped the curtains apart. He saw a clear, deep black night sky, car lights snaking along in a thin dense chain twenty floors below them. Straight ahead the half-scale model of the Eiffel Tower was glowing bronze and gold, the lights played on the casinos, the fountains at the Bellagio did their synchronized dance.

"Vegas?" Jack exhaled it so low it was almost a thought. "That's not good…."

"Stop mumbling and come help me." Sawyer was on one elbow, his eyes pained slits. Jack noticed how Sawyer avoided using his right arm and shoulder as he got him to his feet, and he started wordlessly unbuttoning Sawyer's shirt.

"Want you always, but this hardly seems the time," Sawyer murmured near Jack's ear, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. A second later he spun half around, shouting as Jack tugged the shirt off of his right shoulder, then off his arm, examining the long gash south of Sawyer's collarbone.

"Stand still." Jack walked fast to the bathroom and returned with all the towels. "That's a substantial knife wound you've got. Lucky it didn't reach your lung or this would be a nightmare."

He pressed one towel firmly over the cut, wiped the blood off of Sawyer's chest and waist with another looking for more damage, relief growing when he didn't find any.

"Good thing I'm fast on my feet. Stitch it up for me?"

Jack glared at him and started to stay something then stopped, shaking his head and looking more frustrated, angrier by the second.

"Well we can't go to a hospital," Sawyer said. "Those jackasses I was about to separate from their money were underlings. Their bosses get word on where I was treated, get hold of our names and they'll find us and kill us just to show they aren't to be screwed with."

Jack pulled his phone out, started a call before Sawyer finished the thought.

"C'mon, be the right number, please," Jack whispered, then gave a little sound of relief. "Erika, listen, I'm in Vegas and I need your help. Do you know any ER staff here, someone at your former hospital who can do a CT scan and stitch up a knife wound under the table, no paperwo…. No, not me…Yeah, he's with…"

Jack held the phone away from his ear, staring daggers. Sawyer started chuckling, amused by the sound of Jack's colleague freaking out at Jack over the phone, and when he heard his own name in her diatribe he laughed all the harder.

"Yeah," Jack said, "I know, and I'll owe you. Thank you, let me know who… yeah, who we ask for."

Sawyer had draped one of the smaller towels over his shoulder, tucked it under his arm. He was wincing, pulling his shirt back on as Jack put his phone away.

"Erika hates you." Jack sounded surprised, grabbed extra towels to take along. He'd almost included the word 'here' in the sentence, but caught himself in time.

"Yeah, she's got her mind made up about that." Sawyer walked past Jack toward the door. "You arrive at work sporting some bruises, and instantly I'm the devil."

Sawyer looked back at Jack, frozen, staring at him.

"You coming with?" Sawyer asked, "Or are you staying in a room that's not ours, where the bad guys could show up anytime?"

* * *

It took twenty minutes for their cab to make it two and a half miles to the hospital. The cabbie didn't say a word to them, never commented on the shape Sawyer was in or the blood on his shirt. Jack wondered if the driver never noticed or chose to ignore it.

"Some people say 'only in New York.'" Sawyer's arms were limp at his sides, eyes out the window as Jack checked the wound again. Jack could hear the heaviness in Sawyer's voice, knew he was in some misery and trying not to show it. "They've probably never been to Vegas."

It was late Friday on a holiday long-weekend and the median age of the city had dropped by about twenty years in the past few hours. Kids were streaming from casino to casino, in and out of clubs. The strip was brilliant with white and yellow light and so choked with foot traffic that gridlock bottled up both the streets and the sidewalks. No open container law meant every third person had a beer or a two-foot long, green or purple slushy drink in their hands.

When they passed the Bellagio they noticed dozens of people chanting, saw a crowd urging stumbling tourists to jump off a pedestrian bridge into the pond that housed the fountains. There was a huge cheer when three of them finally tumbled in hand-in-hand.

"Vegas," Jack muttered tersely, "Is a freak show."

"Yeah." Sawyer stared down at the sight of Jack tending to him. "Awesome, huh?"

"Shut up Sawyer," Jack muttered, regretted it immediately, but it was too late.

"That's it?" Sawyer's loud, almost happy reply came close to masking the pissed-off state of mind Jack knew he'd created in him with just three words. "The best you've got? You haven't given me the lecture yet about how I don't even need to do this for a living anymore."

Jack turned to look out the window, hoping to make it stop.

"And I'm pretty used to the rant after that about my alleged death wish. C'mon, Jack, I haven't heard that one in months, and you know I miss it like crazy. Did those two slap all the fight out of you with the handle of that gun? You get a chance to fully experience it before you passed out?"

"You wouldn't happen to have a couple of sleeping pills in your pocket?" Jack started asking before Sawyer finished, talking over him, and he saw Sawyer's expression darken, thunderclouds rolling into his eyes.

"What kind of a stupid, sarcastic question is that, you know I don't take 'em."

"Forget it," Jack muttered, "it was worth a try."

* * *

"Doc, answer me something," Sawyer said.

Jack was so used to the word applying to him, especially out of Sawyer's mouth, that he automatically stopped scanning his phone contacts and looked up. Then he realized Sawyer was talking to the ER doctor stitching his knife wound.

They were all together in a vacant hospital room, Sawyer sitting three quarters up in the bed with the doctor hovering over him. Jack sat a few yards away in a lumpy recliner meant for whoever was staying with the patient.

"If a halfway decent surgeon opens someone up, what are the odds they eventually wake up and say 'howdy' when the job's done?" Sawyer finished his question. His natural energy was back in his voice now that he had a ton of painkillers in him, but Jack could hear he wasn't any less angry than he'd been in the cab. Jack shook his head at the point he knew was being made.

"Depends what's wrong." the doctor Erika lined up for them kept working. "But even for the most desperate cases it's over 90 percent."

"Great," Sawyer said. "Fantastic odds. Know my success rate scamming people?"

Sawyer locked eyes with Jack, glaring, Jack frowning back at him with a hand on his throbbing head.

"It's damn close to one hundred percent, not to boast. Don't you think the stubborn son of a bitch behind you would want to avoid doing anything to screw up a sure thing like that, especially with the potential consequences? It's just as life or death as surgery if you think about it, maybe more so. He could have sat by the pool at the Palazzo for an hour and we'd have been golden. Instead he trails me to the Flamingo, blows my cover…"

Sawyer flinched, gave a gasp of discomfort as a particularly deep stitch went in.

"He gets me stabbed, himself pistol whipped. Costs us a couple of hundred thousand dollars," Sawyer almost shouted the figure, freshly infuriated by the thought. "I should be mad enough to kick him all the way to Reno, but he's the one snarking at me. Think that's fair? Just want an impartial opinion."

"Really want to know what I think?" The ER doc asked. "I wouldn't be sitting in that chair if I were him. I'd be out of here."

Now it was Jack laughing softly, hand still on his head, Sawyer glaring.

"Yeah," Sawyer muttered, "Well what's it say about him that he's not?"

"How long until you're done?" Jack addressed the doctor, ignored Sawyer.

"Another ten minutes or so. Then we'll go do your CT scan, make sure your brain is in the right place."

"Great." Jack got up, waved his phone by way of explanation. "I'll be right back. Phone call I have to make."

* * *

Jack stood just outside the ER doors, the hot desert air a shock after the climate control inside. He was looking at the phone number with the San Diego area code in his contacts, and even though it was after midnight he pressed enter, heard it ringing, hoped his hunch was right.

"Hellooo?" Kate's voice, thick with sleep. Not in prison.

"Hi."

"Jack, what's wrong? Where are you?"

"Vegas. I'm fine. Sorry I woke you up. Just having a… difficult night. Didn't want to let it end without learning something new, getting some kind of value out of the day. So tell me how you are, Kate."

"I'm good," she said, a lilt in her voice. "You'll be happy to hear I'm officially in school again. Two years and I'll have my B.A. Six, and I'm a psychologist. You won't be the only doc in the room when we hang out."

Jack enjoyed her happy laughter at the sound that he made, a sound that said it was the best thing he'd heard in a while.

"When you think back," he said, "What do you feel about it, about our time there?"

There was a pause before she answered.

"In the end I think it saved me. If it weren't for that story you cooked up about how I rescued everyone, kept 'em alive, I'd have spent the best years of my life in prison. That's what I think, Jack. And I appreciate it. I'll always appreciate it."

"I have to go," he said. "Good to hear you're doing well."

"He's not going to get any better." Kate said it fast, kept going like she was afraid he'd hang up before she could finish. "It's been two years. You aren't holding out hope for better, are you?"

"No," Jack said, not as much out of conviction as to simply signal he was still there.

"If you ever get free of him, I'm here," Kate said. "And I'm not running anymore."

"'Night, Kate," he said, left it at that.

"Yeah. 'Night, Jack."

* * *

There were no cabs outside the hospital so they started walking to the hotel. It was all residential neighborhoods until they made a turn onto the south end of the strip and then the sight of it in front of them made them both stop. They could hear four different songs blaring from loudspeakers and feel a thrumming, booming undercurrent below it all. The lights made them both squint after the dark side streets.

"God, I hate this place." Jack was staring at it sideways, hands on his hips. "It's so damn fake."

"You're looking at it all wrong." Sawyer started walking. "It's the most honest city in the whole U.S. It shouts right out loud at you, 'I'm going to take your money and make you hurt – and you're gonna leave me wondering when you can come back for more.' "

That got a full-throated laugh out of Jack.

"Well no wonder you love it," Jack said, and the little grin on his face, the way he was biting his lip brought the first open smile to Sawyer's face that night. It only lasted seconds, though, until the next words came out of Jack's mouth.

"You were lying to me. That's why I trailed you. You've been telling me you were done with conning and I knew you were lying. That's it, right?"

"We might need to get you back to the hospital." Sawyer said it lightly but his smile hardened and Jack could hear he wasn't kidding. "Your brain might be more dislocated than they thought. I told you why I was coming to Vegas and I asked you to stay home. We are both aware why you tagged along anyway."

"I don't buy it. I wouldn't be with you if I knew you were still ripping people off." Jack stopped, exasperated. "Tell me why I'd come to a city I hate and help you screw up your life some more?"

"Are you serious with this?" Sawyer stepped in, both hands in his pockets. "You came here because you're convinced if I get out of your eyeshot I'll fuck someone else or maybe never come home. You've been in paranoid stalker mode for months. And babe - it was wearing thin before, but in case you didn't notice, it just landed us in the goddamn hospital."

Jack froze, in a miserable place between wanting not to believe him and knowing what his divorce had shown he was capable of.

"C'mon," Sawyer said, "let's go grab a cab at the next hotel."

* * *

It was after 2:00 a.m. when they got back to the Palazzo. Jack kicked off his shoes, dropped his jacket on the foot of the bed. He pulled back the top cover and fell in silently, face planting. Sawyer was all over the place, flinging things into a suitcase.

"What are you doing?" Sawyer said. "We're leaving."

"That's exactly what I'm doing, Sawyer, getting the hell out of Dodge," Jack said into the pillow. He waited for Sawyer to ask what he was talking about but Sawyer was too distracted, chalked it up to Jack's fondness for odd metaphors.

"What don't you get about 'someone in this city wants me dead?'"

"We can't leave this room tonight." Jack turned his head sideways, but didn't move an inch otherwise. "You're full of very strong meds and have limited use of one arm. I've got a mild concussion and pounding headache. Just… go in the morning, okay?"

Sawyer started tossing Jack's stuff in Jack's suitcase. "Get up or I'll pull you out by your feet."

"Sawyer, I swear to God if you try it I'll fight dirty. I'll go for those stitches with my fingernails and have you screaming and bleeding on the floor."

"Good thing blackjack is your game, doc, 'cause you can't bluff," Sawyer snapped the words out at him, "You won't do it and you know it."

He had walked to the front door to drop their cases, came back now and grabbed Jack's ankles. He would actually have pulled him off the bed onto the floor if Jack hadn't twisted around, kicking, jumping up and at Sawyer. To his own amazement Jack found he landed on the floor with his right fist back.

"Go ahead, Jack, take a swing. Doesn't matter what I say, you're gonna blame this whole mess of a night on me, just like the good old days, right? Must feel fantastic; I know how you adore looking down on me." Sawyer was bracing, ready to counter.

Jack stopped, turned, waving backward at him in disgust.

"No, I don't, never did…"

"Liar," Sawyer barked and Jack gasped as he felt him push him a step, then another, then all the way to the wall beyond the beds, pinning him to it. "Back when we met you'd throw one at me and your eyes'd light up like you were a kid on Christmas fucking morning. Haven't seen it in years but it's back, has been all night, so get it out of your goddamn system or I'll get it out for you."

"I won't give you the satisfaction, you sick, twisted fu…"

Jack swallowed the last of the thought along with a shout. Sawyer had grabbed Jack's left arm, pulled it diagonally and pushed him down on the bed, planting a knee in his back.

"Know the real difference between you and me?" Sawyer leaned low over him, both feet on the floor now but still pulling Jack's arm back hard to keep him in place. "It's that I know what I am… but you have no clue how screwed up you are."

"You're crazy," Jack spit the words out.

"Am I?" He felt Sawyer's breath in his ear. "Guessing you called Kate tonight and whined to her about your wretched life with me…"

Sawyer let go of his arm and Jack drew it up toward his head but stayed where he was. A second later he jumped as he felt Sawyer's hands under him, at his belt, unzipping him, pulling his shirt up and his pants down.

"You're happy to put on a long-suffering face at work, too. Imagine if any of 'em heard you begging me for it?"

Jack's hips tilted when he felt Sawyer's left hand on him, jerking him hard, the other side of too rough. In seconds his body was responding, his hips thrusting and Jack felt a groan being ripped out of him. He buried his face in the bed to stifle it.

Sawyer stilled his hand, squeezing hard, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"'Make it hurt, Sawyer, do it, please, please… make it hurt.' That sound right? Or don't you hear yourself?"

"Oh God." Jack shuddered at the words, and the unexpected thrill hearing them out of Sawyer's mouth sent all through him.

"It's fuck or fight and you don't wanna fight…" Sawyer was pulling down the collar of Jack's shirt, his mouth sucking at the spot where neck met shoulder, and Jack braced.

"Aw fuck, yeah," Jack moaned as Sawyer's teeth dug into him hard. The pain turned into a thrumming that felt like lust and electricity, something horrifying and exciting that wound its way around every place Sawyer was touching him, might possibly touch him next.

"Tell me… tell me how you want it, Jack. Tell me what you want from me."

Sawyer half-sighed, half-groaned the words into his ear and Jack heard so much anticipation and sorrow in it he could barely breathe. For a second he wanted to give in, give him an answer, _feel_ where a Sawyer this hurt, furious and given permission would take him. But then Sawyer's arms were pulling him up to his knees, pushing him onto his elbows and the reality of it sent another wave of energy through him and this one was all panic.

"Don't … No….. Stop!"

Jack felt how fast Sawyer jumped up and away from him then, so fast that from his vantage point, face down, it was as if Sawyer had disappeared from the room.

"Always promised I would the second the word came out of your mouth." Jack felt Sawyer's hand running over his back, pushing him down slowly, flat to the bed. "First time you ever have. You want me at all now?"

"Umnh… not right this second," Jack said, heard Sawyer laugh darkly. "There are a couple of things I need to wrap my head around."

"Fine. You do that."

Jack rolled over, watched Sawyer walk to the bathroom, dropping his clothes on the floor as he went. Then he heard the shower kicking on and he got up to join him.

Sawyer hadn't bothered to turn on the bathroom lights and the shower was all glass and fully steamed as Jack stepped in. It took him a second to see Sawyer glaring at him in the dark, his back to the water, a towel draped over the stitches. Jack took him by the shoulders and turned him around so he could take his place for a second and let the water hit his still-pounding head.

"Don't you ever call me a sick, twisted fuck again," Sawyer ground the words out and Jack nodded. "I'm no more twisted than anybody else. No sicker than you."

"I'm sorry." Jack buried his fingers in Sawyer's wet hair and ran his thumb over the bridge of Sawyer's nose to make his eyes close. "Stop looking at me like that. Tell me, do you like it? Get off on it?" Jack leaned forward, his own eyes closing, letting the water hit the back of his neck. "When I ask for it that way, is it what you want too? Didn't really sound it."

"I like watching you get what you need…" Sawyer said after a few seconds' thought. "But no, it's not the first thing I'd order on the menu."

"Why not tell me no? That you won't go there anymore?"

"'Cause I've got you like a habit." Sawyer looked away from him. "And I know how these things work. If I say no too often, you'll go looking for someone who'll oblige. The thought of that, babe, the picture in my head – it's so far beyond anything I can stand… there aren't words."

"Wow," Jack sighed, "We are a co-dependent, mutually enabling disaster."

"Ah, psycho-babble," Sawyer murmured. "My favorite."

"Okay, so, put another way – we're a mess here." Jack turned them both around again, giving Sawyer the full flow from the showerhead again. "Here's some advice: Apparently there's nothing you can ever do that'll make me leave you. So feel free to tell me to cut it out or get help. Trust me, you've got a ton of leverage."

"Not wise to give up valuable information for free," Sawyer said, and something lighter, less guarded was in his voice again, "Why so generous tonight?"

"Maybe I'm trying to make up for some of the money I cost you," Jack said. "Speaking of which, you may have to remind me tomorrow what happened."

"What, they give you something for the concussion that screws with your short term memory?" Sawyer asked, and Jack nodded, lying.

"It doesn't always. It can." Jack figured it was best to cover all possible bases.

"I'll go over everything but me being the boss of you. Keep that in my pocket 'til I need it."

"Probably a good idea," Jack said.

Sawyer reached in to kiss him, and Jack let his mind go blank, focused only on the sensation of Sawyer urging his mouth open, Sawyer's tongue sliding slowly along and around his. For the first time since he'd opened his eyes he felt like he was really with him, with the person he'd been with yesterday, could be with forever. He knew if getting back were as easy as wanting it he'd be there now—and the rest of the universe could take care of itself.

* * *

Kate was awake, had been for some time when Jack jumped slightly, sat up.

"Can't sleep?" He asked her. It was still dark out and a 3:00 a.m. kind of quiet.

"Not with you flailing." Her tone was light but questioning. "Do I wanna know?"

"No, you really don't." He lay on his back, rubbing his eyes. "Very bad night."

"Learn anything?"

"Yeah. Not to make assumptions. That things could always be worse than they are."

"Worse than here?" Kate laughed dryly. "Yeah, that's a bad night."

"I did find a place where we were home and you weren't in jail."

"See?" Kate said, "There's hope. Everywhere, there's hope."

"I haven't given up on that," Jack said. "If there's some way I can help you land somewhere safe when this is over I will."

"Thank you." Kate smiled up at him then closed her eyes, trying to slip back asleep.

They only had a few more seconds of peace before they heard it: Low shouts and scuffling that got louder and closer; Sun screaming and the sound of a fight, punches being thrown.

Jack started to scramble over Kate but she grabbed at him, pulled him down as best she could.

"No!" she shouted it so loud her voice went raw. "We don't know what's happening…"

"Kate, they might need us."

Jack climbed around her, but the shouting had died off and she heard Charlie yelling for them both, so she followed him, shaking.

"They've kidnapped Desmond." Charlie was walking their way, licking blood from his lip where a punch had split it, flexing his hand from the pain of having tossed a couple himself. "Half a dozen of them. We caught one. The rest got away."

Behind him a few yards they could see Locke and Jin dragging an unconscious member of the Others toward the tree line, Hurley asking Sun to go find rope, twine.

"Do you know him?" Charlie was still facing them, pointing back, "From when you did the surgery on fake Henry Gale? Did you see this guy there? Maybe you can get something out of him about why the hell they took Des."

"Fake Henry's name is Ben, " Jack said, "And yeah, I saw that guy. He's Richard – Ben's second in command."

"Why would they send someone so high up their food chain?" Kate asked, still shaky, and then started crying, a hand over her mouth as it hit her.

"He was running right for your tent when we caught up with him," Charlie said, looking at Jack. "Pretty sure they were coming to bring you back there, too."

"Don't," Jack said to Kate, "I'm not going back, so don't lose it, okay? I'm not."

"Liar," she said, wiping her eyes. "You'll go. They sent someone you'd recognize, someone who could negotiate with you if they failed—tell you how you can either go with him or watch them storm us and kill us all and take you back anyway. Doesn't take much to figure it out."

"Well whatever's happening," Charlie said, "sure seems like we've gone from skirmishes to open warfare."

"I've gotta figure out why the hell I went to the wrong place tonight," Jack said to Kate, and started walking toward where his friends were tying Richard to a tree. "We're running out of time."


	4. Last Kiss

**Hydra Island  
****Four weeks earlier**

"_Close your eyes, Freckles," Sawyer knelt in the mud, rain pasting his clothes to his skin. He was faced half away from Kate with Pickett holding a gun to his head and water running off his hair and into his eyes, but he could still see her reaching for him through the bars, shrieking. "You close your eyes…" _

_The Others only heard him barking the order. Kate heard the fear in his voice._

"_No, no nooo…."_

_She couldn't give Sawyer what he wanted, because her eyes were frozen on Pickett, willing him to stop. Then she saw the trigger and the hammer of the gun connect, moving in synch and pulled too far back now for any result but one._

_Kate felt herself being flung against the cage and she fell, gasping as she heard the pop of the gunshot. She thought the Others were beating her until she realized she was the one who was throwing herself against the bars, her brain and body so agonized they weren't even connected anymore._

_She heard Sawyer land in the mud, gone, and she fell too, no strength left for anything but screaming._

* * *

"Holy fucking hell," Jack heard Charlie shout, Kate's screams trailing into sobs.

He sat up and saw Claire in his tent sitting facing him with Kate lying limp over her shoulder, Charlie crouched with his head just inside the flap.

"Good God, Jack," Charlie's frown was as much about disbelief as frustration, "How could you sleep through that? She was screaming so hard those freaks probably heard her all the way on the other side of the island. What is wrong with you lately?"

Jack took Kate from Claire's arms and pulled her down next to him.

"I'm so sorry…." He started to say more, but she stopped him, her shaking fingers running over his face.

"Can you make it go away?" Kate was calming down now, but still sobbing softly.

"Yes," he breathed it into her ear and felt her entire body unwind at the word.

"Then I don't care if I go to prison or if none of us ever meet. Make it not happen."

"I will."

"Tell him how awful it was. And tell him I loved him, even if he couldn't really love us. Tell him I don't care, I fucking loved him whether he liked it or goddamned not."

"I will," Jack said, half laughing and half choked up now, too. "I promise, I'll tell him."

* * *

Jack waited until Kate was asleep to walk to the dunes where Richard was tied to a tree.

"Need anything?" Jack asked, "Food, water?"

Richard shook his head.

"I'm being treated well. Better than we've treated your people."

"Why can't you leave us alone? We had a truce."

"Because, Jack," Richard sat forward as best he could. "In all the years I've been here, no one's ever done what you're doing, what we hear Desmond is capable of. We don't want to hurt you or even stop you, we just want to study it."

"And do what with the things you learn? Screw that," Jack waved at nothing and everything as he walked. "I'm going to go un-crash our plane now, Richard. Only regret I have is that when we win you'll never know what you lost."

"If that's how it's going to be, you'd better get it done," he heard Richard's voice behind him, more warning than taunt. "Or there won't be much left here for you to wake up to."

An hour later his eyelids started to fall and Jack hoped that if he failed tonight, he'd at least land in a place with a Desmond who could tell him what the hell he was doing wrong.

* * *

Jack knew he wasn't where he needed to be before he even opened his eyes. His heart would have fallen if it weren't for what he did hear and feel next; the firm pull and push of Sawyer's lips and tongue moving along his jaw and headed toward his ear, Sawyer's fingers tracing random patterns over his chest and his stomach with the tips of his fingers.

They were on their sides in a huge bed, a thick cotton sheet winding loosely over them. Sawyer was up a little up on one elbow, tight against Jack's back, a leg threaded between his.

"Molesting me in my sleep, huh?" Jack murmured, pitching his voice low.

"Am not. Waking you up to ask permission first. That's progress, right? That's growth, baby…."

Jack shifted slowly onto his back, needing to look at the Sawyer fate had sent him to next. Turning over revealed a bay window, a deep black sky with a half moon and a bright field of starlight throwing silver and blue into the room. It accentuated Sawyer's skin, which, he thought, was a waste, as it didn't need any help. It bounced off his hair, so long here it was flirting with falling past his shoulders.

Jack ran one hand over the stubble along Sawyer's chin. It turned out to be closer to beard than stubble, thick and smooth, and he leaned up and pulled him in for a kiss just for the chance to feel it against his face, his fingers.

"It's dark," Jack breathed it when he fell back. "Do I have to get up for work?"

"Not for days," Sawyer was smiling hard enough to pop a dimple at the thought. "You still asleep? Do you not recall packing the car full of camping gear last night? Calling Kate to find out what time she'll be here on her motor-sickle?"

"Hell," Jack closed his eyes. "Why would anyone whose been forced to live on a beach willingly sleep outdoors ever again?"

"That's what we get for hooking up with Sporty Spice. When she comes to visit us, she's not gonna want to go to the symphony, doc. She's probably not up for a day at the museum. She wants to hike, climb shit, build a fire. We can do that. We're all over it."

"I guess." A question jumped to the front of his brain. "When's she getting here?"

"Eight o'clock," The words came out of Sawyer's mouth with a hint of defensiveness, like he was anticipating the follow up. He lifted himself over Jack, pinning Jack's hands over his head and started a fast, light grind between them, hip to hip. "Maybe nine. Takes a few hours from San Diego on a bike."

"So…. " Jack pulled a hand free and grabbed Sawyer's ass, enjoying the 'mmmm' sound it got out of him. "Why'd you wake me up at 'oh-dark-hundred?'"

"Cause I want something. Need something from you."

"What? Tell me..."

"Need you to suck me off," Sawyer leaned in, slowing his hips but still pushing and he spoke the rest against Jack's ear. "Want you to flip me over after, fuck me so hard, fuck me halfway through the bed. Please. …need you to go crazy on me."

"Jesus, Sawyer…" Jack half laughed, half groaned it, amazed again at how a few words out of that mouth going into his brain could raise the temperature in the room. Sawyer wasn't laughing, though, and Jack coaxed him back onto his side and locked eyes with him. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. I … hell, just… please..."

"Here," he sat up and grabbed a couple of the pillows around them, made a pile of them for Sawyer to lie back on. "Up like this so you can watch."

He felt Sawyer's arm lightly over his shoulder, his fingers doing that lazy zig-zag on his back as he took the sheet and pushed it away. It was almost too perfect a view, six foot two of Sawyer laid out in front of him with one leg slightly hitched. The moonlight made him almost glow in the dark.

"How the hell did I luck into this?" Jack started kissing his way down Sawyer's shoulder, over his ribs, licked and flicked his tongue at the nipple closest to him. He slid one hand down to the space below Sawyer's belly button to run his fingers through his favorite patch of hair south of his neck. "You feel so good, taste so good… so fucking beautiful…."

Jack felt him shifting, his legs starting to move aimlessly and he knew he could have him writhing before he even got his mouth on him if he wanted to. He looked up to watch Sawyer watching him, saw him biting his lip, his arms falling away to his sides. There was pleasure in his eyes but something heavy behind it. Uncertainty, Jack thought. Doubt.

"Did I do something to hurt you? Tell me what's wrong?"

"No, shit, you're good to me, you know you are. We're fine…." the words all ran together and he felt Sawyer reaching, coaxing him down.

"Making sure. I never know about me lately," Jack shifted around, reached the first two fingers of his left hand back up to him and Sawyer smiled at last, leaned in to nip and suck them.

"Get 'em good and wet, it's your own sweet little hole you're saving," Jack felt Sawyer grinning around his fingers and he smiled, pushed. "Little more, little more, oh baby, get that spit going…"

"Stupid son of a bitch; Once a year you decide to get goofy and it has to be now," Sawyer fell back laughing and hitched his hips up, "C'mon, do this."

He was still laughing softly, but slid quickly into a surprised moan as Jack took him in his mouth and went very deep quickly, his index finger driving into the hot, tight space he knew he'd bury himself into soon. Soon he had him twisting and panting and giving up some of the words he'd seemed so determined to hide.

"Need you so much, Jack, ..need you.. you're mine… you… fuck, have to be mine.."

* * *

At 7:00 a.m. Jack was in the shower. Sawyer had fallen asleep, and he decided that very hot water followed by a search through his cell phone contact list was in order. The search would be for Des and Penny's number; the hot water was to ease some of the muscle aches Sawyer's demands in the bedroom had left him with.

He had wanted to wait a bit for round two after Sawyer exploded in his mouth, but Sawyer was insistent, not sated. So he'd turned him over, lubed him to perfect slickness and fucked him as hard as ordered. It wasn't Jack's favorite, Sawyer on his knees and wrists, later down on his elbows, but it's what Sawyer told him in very clear words he wanted, those exact angles of attack and a hint of restraint. Jack was glad to give him what he needed, pushing him into the bed with the heel of his hand, then his elbow, swearing softly in his ear, asking him if it felt good, all that cock pounding into him, if he was a slut for it, wanted it harder, faster?

Jack couldn't see Sawyer's sweetly contorted face as much as he wanted, only got a glimpse every so often when Sawyer threw his head back, groaning or when Jack grabbed a handful of that long hair and forced his gaze up sideways. But damn, the sounds he got out of him, the way his voice went hoarse from crying out – after awhile it hadn't even sounded like him. The memory sent webs of electric pleasure through Jack, even though he was too well screwed to do anything about it.

He heard footsteps and the shower door opened. It was foggy, and he could only half see Sawyer's face as he stepped in, yawning, arms dropping around Jack's hips. Jack knew that he himself had the habit of waking up shaky, but Sawyer – sometimes it took him an hour to regain full consciousness.

"That was a pre-emptive fuck, wasn't it?" Jack kept his tone light, and Sawyer didn't move, only nodded. "Are you kicking Kate out of the club? Seems kind of cruel. She is the founding member, after all."

"Not kicking her out of the club. Dissolving it."

Sawyer stood back and looked into his eyes, then dropped into him again.

"Things change, Jack. It was okay when we first got home, but it's been over two years. I heard you on the phone chatting her up, planning this trip and it made chalk on a blackboard sound like beautiful music. You make me lose my mind and I picture you doing the same to her in an hour and I'm sorry… sorry to sound like a damned baby but I can't anymore, not in our house, not anywhere. No. Just fucking no."

Jack stepped back against the shower wall and pulled Sawyer with him.

"Don't worry – you don't want that, it won't happen. You could have just asked."

"Yeah, well I could have and you might have said okay, don't worry and meant it. Then she comes flying through the door like last time, diving right into bed with us…. I wasn't taking any chances. Besides, I like my way – my way got me laid hard."

"You're more than half crazy, you know that? Just… don't drop it on her like a bomb. She really cares about you, you know? Whether you like it or not."

"I know," Sawyer said, sounding a little regretful. "We'll take it a step at a time."

Sawyer reached behind him for the soap and Jack watched him silently for a minute.

"Sawyer, why don't you want me touching anybody else anymore?" He pulled him a step closer, hands going to Sawyer's hips and he felt him give a short, discomforted sigh.

"Because I'm a greedy, jealous guy."

"That's not greedy, actually, our arrangement isn't something most people could deal with very well. Just tell me… I want to hear it."

"'Cause I need you all to myself."

There it was again: Need. Probably the closest he could get to the 'L' word in this world, Jack thought.

"You know what need is?" Jack watched as Sawyer went back to soaping up, frowning. "It's love without trust."

"And here we go," Sawyer muttered, quirking a hard smile that told Jack he was pushing it. "You're a surgeon in every other room in the house but get you in the shower and you turn into a goddamned psychoanalyst."

Jack broke out laughing.

"That's a good one. You made a joke."

"I make lots of jokes. You just don't usually laugh at them."

* * *

Kate had shown up just after 8:30 a.m., with a big grin on her face and windburn from the ride lighting up her cheeks. She'd reached in to kiss Jack and he sensed a bit of 'what the hell was that?' in her eyes when he sidestepped her for a hug instead. He turned, then, to watch her walk over and greet Sawyer and caught an embarrassed little smirk of thanks from him that went over Kate's head.

Now he could hear the two of them laughing, cleaning up the breakfast dishes, getting ready to go. He was walking back from the living room, cell phone in hand, almost afraid to look at it. He'd felt a flood of relief when he found Desmond and Penny's number in the phone, but there'd been no reply to his text asking if he could give them a call. He felt like he was running out of time—that was the real enemy now, he knew; not the Others, not life's endless uncertainties, just everyone's closest friend and enemy, time.

He exhaled with relief when he saw the message: "Pulling into Port of L.A. 10am. Come have lunch instead! Slip 432. Penny."

"Oh, you have to ride with me," Jack heard Kate telling Sawyer as he put the phone away. "There's that cycle shop on the way, the one with the room full of cool helmets and clothes. You're the one who wanted to stop there!"

"Was just telling Kate," Sawyer was wiping down the counter, not looking at either of them. "I might ride in the car with you, we'll meet her there."

"You should get your motorcycle out," Jack drew Sawyer's gaze, stared for an extra second and he saw the tiniest of nods from him. "Spend the afternoon together, catch up, right?"

"Okay," Sawyer said, "I already programmed the GPS for Jalama, the turn-by-turn is in there so you don't end up in San Fran or something. Know you get turned around easy."

"Perfect," Kate jumped up, ready to roll. "Let's go…"

"I'll hit the road soon I just have to drop in to work for a sec," Jack waved the phone to suggest a call had come in. he thought he'd delivered the lie smoothly, and Sawyer seemed fine with it. Kate gave him another 'what the hell' glance, though, and he sensed there'd be questions later.

"Okay, but let's get out of here," Kate grabbed her pack. "Before the plan can change again."

"You need to calm down, girl," Sawyer delivered the order in his best teasing voice.

"You need to get on the damned road," she shot back.

"You need a chill pill."

"You are a chill pill."

Jack sat at the table and watched them, trying to record the moment in some corner of his brain just in case he never got to see it again.

* * *

"When I said I'd see you in another life this isn't exactly what I had in mind…"

Desmond and Jack were sitting along one side of The Searcher, beers in hand, watching the sunlight on the water. Jack had caught Desmond up on everything and was relieved to see him take it in stride, just the way he knew Des would.

"I'm sorry to put this on you," Jack said. "There's no one else I can ask."

"I think my initial advice was good, it was right," Desmond cut him off, not wasting any time. "Lining up everything for an escape - too many things that can go wrong. Taking yourself back to the day I failed to enter the numbers, it makes a lot more sense: One place, one simple job and all the misery goes away. It's brilliant, really."

"So why can't I get there? Because I'm trying to go somewhere they haven't been?"

"No," Desmond sounded as sure as anyone could be of anything. "Everywhere I went, it was for a reason. Outside forces aren't stopping you, Jack, you're stopping you."

"Why?"

"That'd be the question, huh?"

Desmond took a pull on his beer and Jack waited, let him kick the idea around.

"It was different for me, I had it harder in some ways and easier in others. You should thank fate you're jumping from place to place horizontally, not while standing in a phone booth or walking down the damned stairs, that was no joke. But at least for me it was one world and one goal – just to connect with Penny. You're all over the place, aren't you?"

"You wouldn't even believe," Jack said, and there was silence for a while.

"I think I've got it," Desmond finally said and Jack stayed silent, afraid a single word would be enough to drive the secret away. "You said the last two places you've gone, Sawyer's been pretty bad off, yeah? He's either conning still and putting himself in danger, or too afraid to trust anyone, even you. And Kate, just the opposite: You managed to actually find two places where she's free, doing great."

"Don't tell me you think I'm dreaming it up?"

"Nothing of the sort. You're preaching to the choir, remember? I think you're trying to tell yourself something. You know that when you un-crash your plane, the Kate and Sawyer you got on board with will get a reset on their lives – but they'll be on their own, won't they? It would appear you're not good with that."

"So, what? I can't make this stop until I go back and fix things for them? I've got a day, Desmond, one shot. How the hell can I do that?"

"You're tired. On your last nerve," Desmond was watching him and Jack just nodded, sat back. "I can tell, because if you weren't, it'd be pretty obvious. There's only one thing to do, isn't there?"

"And what's that?"

"Go find the Sawyer who got on that plane with you and change his course. Send him after Kate and change hers. One trip, two new paths. Hell, when you do un-crash the plane, maybe they won't even be on it. Whatever happens to them, you'll have done your best. Then, Jack, I have no doubt you'll go straight to where you need to be."

"Oh my God," if anything, Desmond thought Jack looked more miserable than before.

"What?"

"The Sawyer I first met; he was so angry, hostile. I thought we'd never get through to him. I wasn't sure there was any good reason to even bother until…. well, things changed," he saw Desmond smile at the understatement. "And I've got one chance at this?"

"You'll make it work. You have to, so you will."

Jack sat back, eyes out on the water. He was in no mood for words of comfort, but it started sinking in that at least he knew where he was going next – and it wasn't back to the island.

They heard footsteps, saw Penny ducking down the stairs for them.

"Are you two done fixing the problems of the world yet?"

"Depends how you look at it, I guess." Jack said.

"How about you come hash it out over plates and glasses? It's lunch time."

They went to join her but Desmond stopped Jack with a hand to the shoulder.

"Hey, mind if I ask a purely selfish question?"

"Of course not, anything."

"All these places you've been going, Penny and me, are we…."

"Desmond, in every world there is, you two seem to end up in perfect synch. It's disgusting really. I want to hate you for it but I can't."

"Ah that's great. That's lovely, thanks. I'll tell her later, she'll be happy to hear it."

* * *

Jack knew Kate and Sawyer had to have been at the campsite for at least an hour, maybe longer before he got there. He was prepared to find a pissed off and suspicious Sawyer, but as he walked up from the car he noticed how loose and contented he looked, a smile lighting up his whole face.

"SHE's dissolving the club," Sawyer said it softly, even though Kate was fifty yards away, walking back toward them with sticks and leaves for kindling.

"What?" Jack thought he'd misheard.

"She met someone. They're getting hitched."

"No kidding. Kate married. Kate settling down," Jack said it like only hearing it out loud would make him believe it. "You look extremely happy for her, Sawyer."

Sawyer didn't jump at the taunt, just walked away, grinning, to go unload the car.

Jack saw Kate nodding for him to come over where she was starting to arrange logs. He was about to open his mouth to congratulate her when she punched him hard in the arm.

"Damn, what was that for?"

"You better tell me right now that you're not up to something behind his back. I know that was a lie, that that line about dropping in to work," Kate tucked a bunch of the kindling in one spot, scattered the rest. She searched in her pockets for the matches and saw Jack shoot her a smile and a shake of the head that said she was way off.

"Of course not. I stopped off to see Des and Penny. They're in town. Had something I needed to run by …"

Kate raised a hand to stop him.

"Whew. Okay, I don't have to hear any more, then. Just… don't give up on him. I know it can't be easy being with someone whose sure the floor's gonna fall out from under him any day, but…."

"Don't worry, Kate. We're good here. All three of us, we're going to be fine here."

"You know, I've always known this is how we'd end up. Knew the day I lured you two out in the jungle and saw you kiss for the first time."

"How'd you know all the way back then?"

"Well, you couldn't see it. You had your eyes closed," Kate crouched down, flicking the first matches at the kindling, grinned up at him. "But I saw it. He was holding you like he was drowning and you were a lifeboat that appeared out of nowhere. I realized he needed you more than I could ever need anyone."

"There's that word again. It's been following me around today."

"Don't knock it, Jack. Some people never get to experience that. You might want to try appreciating the good parts of it a little."

He thought about where he was going next, and he realized Kate was right.

* * *

A few hours later the camp was pitch dark and almost perfectly silent, the fire down to embers. Sawyer and Jack were on one side of it; Sawyer on his back watching the sky with Jack hitched against him. From his vantage point Jack could see Kate across from them, deeply and dreamlessly asleep.

"What are you thinking about?" Sawyer asked, and Jack wished he could tell him the whole truth.

"Just thinking about uncertainty," he said, heard Sawyer snort softly.

"My least favorite topic."

"I know. And I need to ask you for something, just like you asked me for something this morning and I don't want you to think I'm asking it to be cruel to you. It's probably also going to sound pretty fucking sappy, but .…"

"It's all right" Sawyer said, "tell me."

"Kiss me like it's never going to happen again. Last kiss ever."

"That's not funny," Sawyer said, but he was turning up and over Jack already, looking down at him, trying to read his expression.

"No, it's not funny at all. But it's what I need. Please…"

He half expected it to be frenzied, so Jack was surprised when Sawyer started by wordlessly shifting a little, pulling him to him so that their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces. When he had the balance just right he leaned in, pressed his mouth to the corner of Jack's eye.

"Close 'em," he murmured and Jack did, felt Sawyer's mouth on his then, light, no tongue or teeth, pressing over and over, hint after soft hint of what was coming. He heard Sawyer sigh, breathe in sharply before he went deeper, opening the kiss up wide and loose, a gentle devouring that had Jack dizzy in seconds.

He realized he was the one holding on now, hoping against hope that if someone needs you in one world then part of them will need you in all of them, anywhere they happen to find you.


	5. First Kiss

**Near Ames, Iowa  
****Windward Motel  
****March 21, 2001  
****Time: 4:10pm**

Sawyer parked the car in the motel lot, staring for a second at the row of rooms stacked twelve long and two high. It was one of those extended stay places for business folks and families visiting from out of town and it felt like a safe enough place to just start knocking on doors, looking in windows.

A freight train caught his ear and he thought he might not have noticed the tracks at all if the engineer wasn't leaning so heavy on the horn. It was still a good way off, but it was _loud_ and getting louder.

"Cow," Sawyer thought to himself. "Dog, maybe."

Something on the tracks the driver didn't want to hit.

Then he heard the screaming grind of brakes hit hard, and his eyes shot up again. No cow, no dog: A man was standing on the tracks, arms at his side, shaking his head. Sawyer watched him, saw his shoulders bracing with determination, his eyes dropping down toward the slats at his feet.

"Damn it," He ran full out and saw what looked like a billion or so tons of steel headed their way. The train still seemed to be flying right at them despite the brakes—the driver hadn't had much warning.

"Jack, you stupid son of a bitch, get the hell away from there!"

Jack didn't hear him scream it, or never looked up if he did. Sawyer prayed neither of them would catch a foot in the rails and took Jack out at the knees.

They tumbled down an embankment; the train so close as it passed that it blew dirt and loose leaves in their faces. When it was gone, Sawyer turned and saw Jack on his stomach, sobbing.

"Get up!" he shouted. "_Get_ up, Jack, so I can _kick_ your ass. There are families staying here, kids – they coulda watched you get turned into bone meal and jelly."

"You left," Jack surfaced, starting to actually see Sawyer next to him. "If you didn't believe me, why did you come back?"

"Thought I'd find you bleeding in a bathtub. You don't mess around."

Jack stood, walking silently toward the rooms.

"Where are you going?" Sawyer barked and Jack pointed toward the top floor. "Hold up, I'm coming with. We better get out of here, the guy running the train's phoning home and they're gonna send the cops. Bet on that."

"If you won't go to her, Sawyer, you should have let me die."

"Stubborn bastard," Sawyer said it loud for Jack's benefit, went into a mumble meant just for himself. "I know I have done wrong in my life, but what did I do to deserve this?"

**Delta Terminal  
****JFK Airport  
****March 21, 2001  
****6:00am**

Sawyer didn't like 'in between'. He was there, though, hung over at a restaurant in Terminal 4 at JFK waiting on a flight to Dallas to look for a new gig. The wide-open space was so empty that the sound of one set of shoes on the marble floor echoed up to the skylight and caught his ear. He looked over and saw a whole lot of black-haired, hazel-eyed potential.

"Here comes trouble," Sawyer thought. "Trouble with money."

Then 'potential' walked up to his table and pulled out a chair, slumping in it with a look that said he was so relieved he could barely sit up straight.

"Thank God. I was afraid I'd spend half the day looking for you."

"You were, huh?" Sawyer asked as the waitress walked over and the guy ordered coffee and an egg white omelet. He sized him up: Maybe fun trouble, maybe not. Risky business? That was the big question.

"I know what you're thinking," Sawyer's new partner in breakfast grinned as the waitress walked away, and there was something about the way that grin lit up his face; Sawyer couldn't resist flashing him an inviting smirk back.

"I highly doubt you know everything I'm thinking, gorgeous."

Damn if he didn't give Sawyer a jolt in response, eyes burning into him in a way that said he'd love to hear about it in exquisite detail if he had time.

"You think someone sent me, maybe a colleague or maybe an enemy," Jack said. "But I came looking for you myself because there's a job I need you to take on. You get to save a pretty girl from a horrible future and corrupt her at the same time. It's your favorite line of work, so you … you _have_ to come with me today, hear me out."

"Have to?" Sawyer shook his head. "I don't believe in those two words together. Need to hear some why-for or I'm not going anywhere with you. It sounds sketchy, like I could end up all tangled up in your problems or hers."

"Give me the day and the worst that'll happen is you'll end up with twenty thousand in cash for your time. If I convince you, if everything works out, it could be a lot more profitable than that. The two of you working together… you'll probably make a fortune."

Sawyer considered the zero sure dollars in Dallas and reached out a hand.

"Seems wrong to do a deal without names," he said, "I'm Sawyer."

"Jack," he said, "And I already know you. Very well."

"Yeah? And I don't remember you because…"

"We actually meet three and a half years from now. Or would have. If I hadn't come looking for you."

Sawyer laughed in a way that said this guy was every kind of trouble.

"You're crazy," Sawyer said. "I'm flying to….

"Iowa," Jack said.

"Flying to Iowa with a lunatic. This is what my week has come to."

"Not crazy," Jack said. "And I can prove it. Got anything better going on?"

"No. But I need to see some cash. And you're covering expenses."

"Fine," Jack glanced toward the counter like he was looking forward to that food, "Hell of a lot more progress than I'd hoped for by seven a.m."

**Over Illinois**

Once they took off, Sawyer realized quickly why Jack had taken such a chance saying what he'd said. It was so when he told him the rest of the story, Sawyer wouldn't make a scene on the plane.

He had a feeling Jack was going light on details, but what came out of his mouth was discomforting enough: How his supposed colleagues would use him to kill an innocent man; that he would never make it home after; how someone they both cared about would spend her life in prison without his help; how losing him had sent Jack's life spinning out of control.

"And you think this place where we all meet – it's part of why you're going all over creation trying to help me?" Sawyer was visibly far from convinced, but he hadn't asked the stewards if he could change seats yet.

"Yeah," Jack said, "The only other person I know who's been through this, it happened to him there, too. But the mechanics aren't what matter, Sawyer, we can leave them aside or talk about them later. It's about the people in our lives, in the end. I can't fix things for everyone who got on our plane- some of them will die who would have lived and vice versa. But I have to fix the things I can't live with. That's why I'm here. For you and for her."

Then Jack took a deep breath and told Sawyer every single thing he knew about him, straight from Sawyer's own mouth.

**Over Ames, Iowa Municipal Airport  
****March 21, 2001  
****Time: 2:05pm**

Sawyer's eyes had been out the window for twenty minutes, seeing nothing.

"I'd call you a lunatic again, but some of that… I haven't told a soul." He turned, saw Jack shifting in his seat looking miserable at the discomfort he knew he was causing him. "The nightmares, the time in high school when I thought about, when I almost…"

"Well, you told me," Jack said, "and probably Kate."

"She's this girl we're heading for? The one who'll kill her step-daddy if I don't convince her to run away and join the circus with me?"

Jack nodded and Sawyer noted how his eyes didn't waver, how he didn't make reflexive gestures or any of the other things liars do.

"Need to digest this before I make a decision," Sawyer said. "When we land, get your rental car. I'll ride, but I'm not sure I'm going in that restaurant."

"That's all I can ask," Jack said. "If it helps, it's weird for me, too."

"Weird how?"

"Sitting next to you on a plane, for starters. And it's the first place I've been where you look at me like I'm no one in particular. That's …unexpectedly awful."

Sawyer saw Jack had an eye on Sawyer's hand on the armrest, was fighting the urge to touch him in a small, acceptable-on-an-airplane kind of PDA.

"Well 'no one in particular' is harsh, and not accurate." Sawyer said. "But I can't be sorry I don't look at you like you expect. And anyway, I don't do sorry."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I know. I'm just relieved you didn't shut me out. When we met you were so angry, so hostile."

"That's probably because I'd been in a goddamned plane crash and was stranded," Sawyer said it in the clipped, overly patient tone of voice he used to suggest someone had missed the ridiculously obvious. "If you know me, you know I like having control over my life, so that wouldn't set well would it?"

Jack looked away, fighting back a laugh.

"What's so fucking funny?"

"You sounded like you." Jack bit his lip, pulled out the airline magazine from the seat back, flipping through and pretending to read it. "Just now. It was… it felt really good."

"Aw hell," Sawyer saw Jack's cheekbones coloring. "You and her and me?"

"Yeah," Jack said.

"Great," Sawyer said, "That doesn't complicate my decision at all, does it?"

**Broadway Diner  
****Ames, Iowa  
****March 21, 2001  
****Time: 2:28pm**

"Is she here?" Sawyer's eyes scanned the restaurant.

"Not yet. She will be. She said she came here every day around three, then for a late dinner. Said it beat being alone in the house with her step-dad."

"Which one's her mom?"

"The one who handed us these," Jack tapped the back of his menu.

Sawyer's eyes went to her, the waitress by the grill picking up an order.

"Doesn't seem like the type to hang her own daughter out to dry, all that "dear" and "honey" crap she laid on us."

"In her defense," Jack shrugged, "Kate does kill her husband."

"Would have," Sawyer said.

"Does that mean you've made up your mind?"

"Depends," Sawyer said, eyes back on the menu. "See when she gets here."

"Shallow," Jack said it almost off-handedly and Sawyer looked offended.

"I don't mean her looks. There's a lot to think about. Does she seem like she'd be some use running scams? Is she low maintenance or high maintenance?"

He saw Jack considering the last question.

"Medium," he finally said, "Not high. Not low."

"Great," Sawyer said. "Deal's on hold now for sure. There is no medium, Jack. Medium is high."

**Broadway Diner Parking Lot  
****Time: 3:45pm**

"Well thanks, you saved me having to call a garage. Good eye, girl."

Jack could barely hear what Sawyer and Kate were saying as Sawyer dropped the hood of the rental car down. Jack was sitting at one of the outdoor tables, pretending to fiddle with his phone and keeping out of their way. He marveled at how Sawyer used the perfect approach and tone to get her to come to his aid and how he'd also managed to devise an easily fixed, self-inflicted engine problem that wouldn't be so obvious she'd call his bluff.

"A couple of my friends are car nuts," Kate said. "Guess it wore off on me."

"Thanks again. Appreciate it."

She was pulling out of the lot as Jack walked to the car.

"You okay?" Sawyer asked.

"Yeah," Jack said. "I will be. It always feels strange for a minute."

"Great," Sawyer threw him the keys and walked around to the passenger's side. "You drive then. 'Cause I'm not okay."

They went in silence for a while, and Sawyer realized Jack was afraid to break it, couldn't even manage more than the occasional look over. By the time Jack found a motel he could stay in and pulled into the lot, Sawyer expected Jack already knew what was coming.

"What that girl may or may not do, that's on her," Sawyer met Jack's disappointed gaze without hesitation or apology. "But I can't be responsible for her."

Jack looked out the far window and it seemed to Sawyer like he was crumpling from inside, spent.

"You felt something when you talked with her, didn't you?" Jack asked.

"It was like we'd known each other the longest time. I told myself it was you putting crazy ideas in my head the last few hours, but then it hit me: What if déjà vu is all these places you're bouncing between? Have you wondered if maybe we feel 'em all, or parts of them, even if we don't go jumping between 'em every day the way you do?"

"I do. Every day," Jack said. "Think about it every single day."

Jack hoped there'd be room to change his mind but Sawyer's next words ended that.

"I won't take your money. I'll drive the car to the airport, drop it off…"

"The money doesn't matter," Jack murmured. "The car doesn't matter."

"I swear I'll never go to Australia. I'll get new contacts, cut my old ties."

"Tell me, Sawyer, please; tell me how I convince you."

"You can't," Sawyer said it softly, saw Jack flinch. "I can't deal with this."

"Then this is done. I'm done," Jack handed Sawyer the keys and opened the door. "See you on the other side."

Sawyer's brain was a jumble as he hit the interstate, and he flipped on the radio for the noise. It didn't help. He'd driven one highway or another almost every week for his whole adult life, mostly alone and entirely fine with that. Now, he couldn't quite breathe right and the walls of the car felt close around him. He mentally kicked himself for letting a maniac get in his head, and turned up the volume. It didn't help.

A few miles later he pulled into the left lane looking to make a U-turn.

**Windward Motel  
****Near Ames, Iowa  
****Time: 4:35p**

"You were ready to die," Sawyer paced, glancing into the bathroom. "Now you feel the strong need to wash up?"

Jack had headed straight from the tracks to the office to get a room and then to the shower. He was under it now, gasping in a way Sawyer found was making his breath catch.

"It's for the… cold… water," Though he was freezing Jack's voice was flat and that made Sawyer stare down at the floor, frowning. "Need to wake up."

The tap turned off and Jack was in the room seconds later with a towel around his waist, drops still sliding from his hair over his face. He shook his pants to get the dirt out, slammed them against the desk when it didn't work.

"Don't look at me," Sawyer said when Jack glared at him. "I'm not the one who got your clothes all muddy. Why are you fighting to stay awake?"

"'Cause I'm motivated. You'll fall asleep or go. There'll be another train."

Sawyer pulled out the chair next to the desk and sat watching Jack get his clothes in decent order for his next suicide attempt.

"Why do you have to be so stubborn about this?"

"I promised I wouldn't let her rot in prison. Now I can't fix things for her and I can't go back." Jack gave up on the clothes, leaning on the desk. "I know you think I should go warn her myself but believe me Sawyer, she is impetuous and a harder sell than you by a long shot. Me telling her and then taking off - it might be what gives her the idea to blow up her mom's house in the first place."

Jack watched that thought wash over Sawyer.

"It gets complicated, screwing with this stuff," Jack paused like another thought had hit him. "You didn't answer me earlier. Why did you come back? You don't do anything to be kind, to be good. There has to be something in it for you, you told us that more than once. "

"I was driving and I realized that if you're not bat shit crazy, and I'm starting to think you're not, then you probably saved me from getting shot in the head. And I repaid it by taking off. That's pretty cold by anybody's standards. Then I heard what you said before I drove away, and I thought about you dead and me never seeing either one of you again. I wasn't okay with any of that. Not at all."

"Déjà vu?" Jack asked, his voice soft, the frustration forgotten.

"Yeah. I think so."

Sawyer leaned forward, thinking, and Jack felt every hope he had for them hanging on the moment.

"I can't promise I'll stick with her more than six months, tops." Sawyer finally said and Jack turned, ran a hand over his head in relief. "I can reel her in, get her to tell me about her plot, convince her that her mom might not be on board like she thinks she'll be. I'll show her it's true, living well's really the best revenge."

"Perfect," Jack said. "Doesn't have to be forever, but get her out of here. Besides, you're the one who told me; she always peels off."

There was a sharp knock at the door.

"Cue the cops," Sawyer said under his breath, "Or maybe motel security," he gestured toward the bathroom and shoved Jack's clothes back into his hands. "I've got this. That driver couldn't have seen me too well."

Sawyer messed up his hair, pulled his shirt open and kicked off his shoes.

"Hold on, hold on," he shouted, flipping his belt off for good measure. He opened the door squinting, looking like someone who'd been napping.

Jack barely heard the person at the door, only heard Sawyer's response: "No sir, didn't hear a train, didn't hear a thing 'til you knocked. No problem, good luck…"

Jack stayed where he was, leaning against the sink until the bathroom door swung slowly open. Sawyer peeked in, the little grin from this morning back on his face.

"You're welcome," Sawyer said.

"Thank you," Jack started to walk past him and Sawyer stopped him with a hand to his chest, locking eyes.

"Did the math between the front door and here. Got a bunch of time to kill 'til she shows up at that diner again tonight." Sawyer's left hand went to Jack's right hip, tugging lightly at the towel, running a finger back and forth under the top of it. "And let's face it, no matter how smooth I talk I am not getting any from her the first night, am I?"

"Are you hitting on me? In my fragile state of mind?" Jack frowned but his voice teased. He pushed Sawyer's collar back with a finger to plant a light kiss on his shoulder, nipped up toward his left ear inch by inch, dipping both hands under his shirt to run them along his skin. "So cold, using me for sex."

"Giving you a chance to clear any doubts in my head," Sawyer felt a small shiver, and surprise at the tight note of desire in his own voice. "If I'm yours, you must know all my buttons. I want that: You pushing my buttons."

Jack raised his lips to Sawyer's ear.

"James, I think I've wanted you forever. My whole life."

Jack saw Sawyer's eyes close and he dove in, kissing him the way he knew he liked best; hard and deep, no teeth, all sliding, dueling tongues. The second Sawyer start kissing him back it had the usual effect - all Jack wanted in the world now was them horizontal and tight together, Sawyer moaning and crying out that he was going to come, he was going to fucking come from what Jack was doing to him.

Jack pushed the thought away as best he could and stepped back, keeping the kiss fast and wet but avoiding the temptation to lock hips. He didn't want it to be about that yet. He ran a hand through Sawyer's hair, over his the back of his neck, stopping a moment along the way to feel the pulse under Sawyer's jaw pounding fast and strong against his fingertips. His other hand went to Sawyer's side, in a way that asked him to not even think about going anywhere soon.

He kissed him until he felt him breathing fast and shallow, reaching a point where things had to either move forward or slow down. He worried Sawyer's lower lip gently with his teeth and stepped back.

"Damn," Sawyer said, looking loose, all his edges rubbed away. "Hell of a first kiss, Jack."

"First for you, not for me," Jack looked into Sawyer's eyes. "Convinced?"

"Closer than I was before."

"Great. Let's go get you the rest of the way there."

And then Jack was where he'd desired to be, but a little worried they might not make it all the way to horizontal. He'd led them to the bed and sat on the edge of it, ridding himself of his towel and Sawyer of his pants, and then he'd pulled Sawyer in close to him and had gone down on him the same way he'd kissed him – hard and deep and intent on taking him somewhere quickly. He sucked and squeezed and teased until he felt him swaying, saw his head dropping back. When Sawyer let go of a long, deep moan Jack pulled away, hands and fingers tight around the two spots he knew would leave him hanging on the brink.

"Jesus, fuck," Sawyer bit the words out, one of his hands pushing at Jack's forehead, forcing his gaze, and Jack was the one who shivered this time, at the lust in his eyes. "That one of your buttons, babe? Seeing how many times you can take me to the edge?"

"You only have yourself to blame," Jack said. "Learned it from you."

"I'll remember to kick myself in the ass later," Sawyer grinned, but his eyes stayed so hungry.

Now he was close again, thrusting shallowly, gasping and swearing under his breath. Jack had a hand on each of them, the sounds Sawyer was making doing as much to get him close as the hard strokes he was giving himself or the feeling of Sawyer's cock, so hard and smooth, sliding in and out of his mouth. Then he heard the string of cuss words stop, heard Sawyer sigh deeply and he reached forward, ready to swallow him down.

The surprise was on him when he felt Sawyer roughly pull his hand away, push his head back gently.

"Get back there," Sawyer answered his confused look, pointing to the bed and Jack spread out on his back.

"You want to fuck me, Sawyer? You can if you want…"

Sawyer answered by dropping down and turning them on their sides, tangling legs to brace, and then pushing hard once against him with a grunt before staring a fast slide, skin to skin.

"No. Together, like this," Sawyer growled it in his ear, his hand going around them both, tugging. "If you are mine, Jack, you fuckin' come for me _now_ and let me hear it. Let me … _aww_ _God_… hear what I am to you."

Sawyer didn't have to urge; the hot, wet friction and the hard grip were overwhelming after all the kissing and sucking and stroking that had come before. He felt Jack go over the top before he got all the words out, heard the relief and release pouring out of him and he knew —there was no faking wanting someone that much.

One hot shower and a languid, wiped out goodbye kiss later, Sawyer was gone and Jack was back in bed fighting to keep his eyes open. He pictured Sawyer a few minutes before, sitting on the edge of the bed, saying 'sure you can't come along? Let you ride shotgun every day.'

He pictured him now, about to pull onto the highway, and he felt as much as he imagined the moment when Sawyer chose the eastbound ramp toward Ames and toward Kate instead of the westbound lane to the airport. He felt it because it happened in same second that he smelled sand and felt the sun on his skin, heard ocean waves and a breeze in the trees.

Jack sat up and saw the beach, their beach. There were no tents, no tables, just sand and foliage and the water rolling softly in. No camp at all.

"It hasn't been built yet," he sighed in relief to no one but himself.

He laughed when he stood and saw he was wearing the suit he'd worn on the plane. Then he lost the jacket and kicked off his shoes, and started out for the Swan hatch, praying his timing was right and that in a few minutes he'd be home –they'd all be home, for good.


	6. I've Seen That Road Before

**Los Angeles  
September 22, 2007**

Jack knew he was in his own apartment again. Still, he didn't dare open his eyes. If he was wrong...

He wasn't wrong. And though sitting up and putting his feet on the floor felt like waking from a dream, he knew he really _had_ just made one last trip from the beach to the hatch, got there to find the clock ticking down, three minutes left.

He remembered stopping to scribble Desmond two quick notes before he got down to the job at hand. The first one read, "Take the other piece of paper, tie it _and_ the failsafe key to a rock. Walk two miles east and throw them at the third bungalow on the left. Sail the Elizabeth on a course of 3.24 – it's the _only_ course that gets you away from here. Penny's looking for you. You should go find her this time. - _Jack_.

The second note, which would soon be lobbed onto Ben Linus' front porch with the failsafe key, read, "Push your own goddamned button."

Then he had entered the numbers and hit 'execute' and he had felt it: They'd land at LAX safely, not even a bump in their flight. He would go to the place with the James who needed him most, the one who got his heart broken in return for daring to love someone.

* * *

Jack got up slowly and walked around his room, doing inventory: Only his clothes in the closets, his things in the dresser and on the desk. James had left immediately, he was sure of that. He pictured their long weekend together, the crash inquiry, the dinner with their friends, how they'd waited for Desmond's call. He pictured James watching him until Jack had sunk fully into sleep and then getting dressed and leaving, driving away, alone.

Jack finally thought to wonder how far from that weekend he had 'landed' time-wise, and he flipped open the phone on the nightstand.

"Twenty months," he shook his head, thinking how much may have happened since he'd left. He decided to be happy it wasn't twenty years.

Then he Googled 'private investigators' and told them he had to find someone.

"Who is he to me?" Jack almost laughed into the phone. "That's actually a really good question. No, he doesn't owe me money. He's…. I'm his. Will that do? No, no, I'm not stalking him…"

* * *

**Lake Summit  
****Near Hendersonville, NC  
****Five weeks later**

It took time to shut down his practice and sell his place, but when he was finally ready to head east Jack discovered he wasn't ready to fly yet. So he packed what he needed into his SUV and pulled onto the highway. Six days later he was driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains, then along the Green River, watching the leaves fall from the trees in thick waves like huge yellow and orange snowflakes.

It hadn't been easy, waiting weeks to see him. The information the PI gave him included a phone number for James, but every time he started to dial it, all Jack could think about were the many ways the conversation could go wrong quickly—if James even picked up.

He stopped at a gas station a couple of miles before the turnoff to Lake Summit Drive and told himself it was because the SUV was almost out of gas and he could use some water. He knew the real reason, felt it fluttering in his throat and through his gut: It was that same sinking feeling of uncertainty he'd felt over and over all these weeks.

"At least this is it," he thought. "Whatever happens, I won't feel like this again."

He knew he meant it; He was here for good now, whether things worked out or not, and James was the last person he was ever letting in enough to make him feel this way.

"In for the winter?" the store clerk, an older man who looked like he'd worked there since forever, had asked when he'd handed him his credit card for the gas and the water. Jack just shrugged. "Not to pry, but you don't look like a leaf-peeper and we don't get many other city people this time of year. Mostly just folks coming in to house sit for their friends. Gets cold enough for us in February, but it's lovely for those from, say, "_Bah_-stun".

"No," Jack smiled politely. "Not a snowbird. Looking for a friend. Maybe he shops here? James Ford."

"Sure he does. You _might _catch him. Might be gone already. He was shutting the place down for the season last I saw him," Jack froze at the words, could only stare at the guy as he finished the thought. "Good man, James, but there's someone who really does everything the hard way, yeah?"

"Absolutely," Jack thanked him as calmly as he could, then flew the last four miles.

Jack recognized the house the second he saw it, the deep grey clapboards that looked almost black against the trees fanning behind it, the sharp pitch of the roof, the little extra 'apartment' along one side for visitors. He parked and walked around the front lawn, heart sinking. Everything shouted of a place tidied up for the season with James' attention to detail: Log pile covered in tarp, rocks sealing the wood off from all water, the shrubs and smaller trees around the house wrapped in netting to protect them from winter winds and ice. There was a note in an envelope taped to the front door, and he flipped it open without hesitation.

"Sam – Gone to pick up the bike. Be by to drop it off and then I'm out of here. Please seal all the back porch windows shut. Got a couple done, but most of them still need attention. Cash is on the counter for that, and pressure-washing the deck. - _James_

There was hope in what he saw through the garage window: No motorcycle, but the car was still there. He hadn't couldn't have left town yet.

Jack broke in easily, knew from his past visits that the alarm code was the numbers in reverse. He wandered the house, re-familiarizing and kept quiet and well out of the way when Sam showed up to do his housekeeping jobs. Then he waited.

Around midnight he gave up, walked to James' room, kicked off his shoes and fell into bed.

* * *

"_What_ in the hell are you doing here?"

The house had been so silent all night that those eight words gritted out under James' breath sounded like a cannon going off. Jack jumped, shaking as he woke and saw mid-morning light streaming in.

"Knew you had a lot of nerve, Jack, but this is beyond anything I'd ever expect."

Jack slumped, realizing that this time it was James who didn't know which Jack he was getting.

"Wait, no, don't…."

"Don't what? Don't kick your ass hard all the way to your car? Don't make you suffer a little for the fun of it? You made it clear the day we got home how much you hate me and I haven't heard word one from you since. So what are you _doing_ in my house?"

Jack was on his feet, a hand going to James' shoulder but it got tossed away quickly.

"What did I do to you? What did I say or do to hurt you so much?"

Jack asked it with his heart in his voice, but he found it only pissed James off even more. He was in Jack's face in a way he hadn't been in a very long time.

"Which part?" James snapped at him. "The part where you told me you wished I'd died in the crash so I never would have gotten the chance to fuck you, make you do things you'd regret? Or when you said you wished my daddy had the brains to look under the bed _before_ he blew his head off?"

"Oh … no," Jack stepped away from him, sitting down again, stunned.

"Then there was you threatening to dig up all my dirt, get me tossed back into prison if I didn't leave all our friends behind and promise to never see them again. You took the only good things I ever had in my life and put a fence around 'em with me on the other side. Keep telling me you don't remember, and I won't be responsible for what I do."

Jack shook his head. He could actually see the hurt and betrayal pouring out of James.

"I would never… _never_ do that to you," Jack said the only thing he could.

James' left hand was clenching, flexing, and he looked torn between wanting to follow out on his threat and a sudden burst of confusion.

"Last time we were together I told you the same thing – I'd never hurt you." Jack took the silence as permission to go on. "And you said you could see it was true every time you looked at me. Do you remember that?"

"No," James said it so low he could barely hear it; his eyes on the ground now and Jack knew he was lying, even to himself, a protective reflex. His hand was open, though, no more fist, and Jack kept going.

"Sure you do. You came to my apartment the night before the crash hearing. You were gonna leave after it was done and I convinced you to stay. You waited with me three days until Desmond called, and I was practically walking into the walls from exhaustion but I told you I'd fix it, that I'd be back. And I did… it's done, I'm back…"

"This isn't happening," James said it heavily, took a step and a half away from Jack toward the door to the hallway. He ran a hand over his head, eyes focused on some mid-point in the distance.

"Yeah," Jack said. "It is happening. And you have to believe it, or I'm so screwed. I can't even tell you where I'll go," he stood again, walked over to James, "because I have no idea. I don't know what to do with the rest of my life if you don't believe me."

Jack was done, nothing more to say, so he just took the hand that was hanging at James side and squeezed it, ran the fingers of his other hand over James cheek, into the hair along his temple, gently forced his gaze back to him.

"Jack?" James breathed it when their eyes connected and Jack nodded, silent, waiting for what was next, afraid to move, afraid moving even a millimeter would ruin it all.

Then he huffed out an almost silent laugh of deep relief as James threw his arms around him.

"You _better _not leave again," James said, chin over Jack's shoulder, fingers digging into his back. "If you came here just to go away again the next time your eyes close…"

"No, I promise. It's done." Jack said.

"How do you know for sure?" James hadn't let go of him, sounded like a kid who wanted reassurance the sun would come up again tomorrow, who wasn't convinced it would just because it had today.

"Because I did what I had to, I got them home… and I waited for weeks to make sure. I quit my practice, sold my place. I'm not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to."

Jack felt James take half a step back before he'd even gotten the last few words out, felt James' hands going to either side of Jack's head, holding it right where he wanted it. He blinked, smiled as James reached in to kiss him wide, deep, urgent and Jack gave himself over to it, sinking into him, the dizzy, confused feeling he always got from James kissing him kicking in hard. He dropped his arms as it happened, looped them around James' lower back and pulled him to him.

Jack felt his heart both rise and break open a last, little bit when their bodies met and James shivered, gasping in relief, and Jack knew their futures were decided.

* * *

"How long did it take you?" James asked. "To get it done and come back?"

They were on the deck that stretched from the short backyard out into the lake. Jack had answered most of his questions, at least as well as he could, and now James was sitting watching the water and Jack was stretched out on his back, watching the sky.

"About two weeks," Jack looked apologetic.

"Damn. Two weeks for you, almost two years for me. Hardly seems fair."

Jack knew James wasn't looking for a reply so he didn't say anything, just lifted a hand to run his fingers along James' shirtsleeve, feeling James' arm hard underneath the fabric. He dropped them down, then, to pull at the belt loops on James' jeans, felt the desire rising to reach for his belt. Jack was a little surprised they weren't already in bed, but they'd both been emotionally drained by the reunion and there was a lot to talk about.

"What do you think happened to him?" James asked.

"You mean the 'me' who made your life hell?"

"Yeah, 'rat bastard Jack'. That's what we'll call him from now on," James said and smiled when Jack grimaced. "Don't feel bad, babe – you can't be the hero every time."

"I think the universe likes balance. When I reset things and came here, I think he woke up on the plane, the flight I'd been on," Jack said. "Probably very confused by a crazy dream he'd just had."

"I get that. Told myself I'd never see you again, maybe it never happened," James shook his head, eyes still out on the water. "Sometimes when I couldn't deny it, I'd end up pissed off that you dropped in at all, showed me how things could have been and then you left. I almost slipped into some pretty bad habits, but then I found this place and rebuilt it almost board by board, one room at a time…."

"That's what he meant," Jack said, saw James look down at him. "The clerk at the store by the highway, he said you do everything the hard way."

"He just doesn't get that I had a lot not to think about," James shrugged. "I didn't want to wait for the settlement money to roll in, either. This was a steal, seeing as how it was falling apart, almost tipped over into the lake."

"If you'd waited…."

"I coulda bought a much fancier house, I know. But I kept driving by and it got in my head. I wanted it to have another life, people living here, friends visiting…."

Jack stood, saw James peering up at him, spent but happy, his warmest smile making his eyes squint. Jack held out a hand and nodded toward the house.

"Let's go start it, then. Enough about what happened. Let's see what happens next."

* * *

The last thing Jack had expected was for them to take a spin around the world, but then a few nights after their reunion the nightmares had started.

"You dreaming about the bad times?" James had asked.

"I'm dreaming about the places you weren't. The times I woke up somewhere strange and looked for you and never found you."

"Hell, that's easy to fix," James said. "We'll go spend a few weeks in each one, turn 'em into places we've been. By the time we're done, winter'll be over. We come home, get the insulation and the heating system right and never leave here again if we don't want to."

"You'd do that?" Jack had asked, and James had shrugged.

"You went all over creation for me, didn't you? Besides, it'll get you over your fear of flying. Time to stop letting the past have any say over you, Jack."

* * *

**Paris  
****Two Months Later**

They spent some time in Bali, and then headed for Paris. Neither of them had any expectations about it. Then they got there….

Sawyer blamed it on the lights from La Tour, which they could see glittering outside the huge window that took up a whole wall of their room. Jack thought it was the vibe of the whole city that was to blame, lovers hanging all over each other, rolling around so hard in the grass in the Jardin des Tuileries that sometimes it looked like they were fighting.

Whatever it was, they couldn't keep their hands off of each other. They kissed everywhere, touched under tablecloths, in cabs, on boats, in parks. Buttons were undone and zippers tugged furtively down, sometimes at night and often in broad daylight. Jack suggested they leave town before they landed in jail for public lewdness, but James wasn't having any of that. Jack was a little concerned he might never get him out of Paris, ever.

At night, when they were done wandering, they'd start in the shower and enjoy the luxury they'd never had before – time. There would be minute after minute of tongues and teeth, hips bumping, legs tangling, fingers tracing aimlessly in search of a new spot that one didn't know would make the other hiss, lean into the wall for support.

Then they'd fall into bed, skin and hair still damp, still ramping things up slowly until a hand shook or breathing sped and muscles tightened, or one of them shuddered or groaned. Then there was usually no more slow and patient.

"My turn," Sawyer murmured into Jack's ear this time, his voice already heavy. He turned Jack none too gently onto his stomach, a hand running under him from his shoulders down, urging his hips up.

"Sure about that?" Jack turned his head sideways, smiling, watching the lights out the window. He knew he wouldn't get an answer- at least not in words. He sighed, shifted his body, his arms, getting settled as he heard James slicking himself up, giving a tight sound of anticipation, taking his time to enjoy it.

"Sick of me already?" James dropped in, draped over him, mouth over Jack's ear, and though he didn't get a 'no', he did get a series of stuttering 'aaahs' out of Jack as he slid a finger deep inside him, crooked it, started twisting. "Maybe I need to make you beg a little. Don't want you to start taking me for granted so soon. Tell me… tell me you want me. Let me hear it, Jack, c'mon…"

Jack thought he was kidding, had to be kidding, until James added a finger and started teasing him into a frenzy, finding the spot he knew would send Jack's body flying in two directions at the same time, fingering him long and deep and so smooth until Jack heard his own voice from a distance, begging, 'please, please…oh _fuuuck,_ please, now, _do it_…'

Then the fingers were gone and James was everywhere, cock driving into him, his head reaching around Jack's shoulders to capture his mouth, kissing him as hard and deep as he was taking him, and they twisted and thrust that way into each other, bodies rippling and hands finding each other's, fingers twining together until they were as close as they could ever hope to be.

"Look, beautiful," James said as they were coming down, James out of him now but hitched almost over him, both of them still breathing hard. Jack turned his head away from the window and noticed for the first time how the mirrored closet doors across from the bed were set up just …so.

"Awww, hell…" Jack reached an arm back over James' hip, pushed up at him at the same time and saw James' reflection in the mirror, how he braced and his eyes closed and his mouth dropped open with one last, almost silent groan. "Lots of ways we can use that, huh?"

"Gonna fall in love with your own reflection?" James sank back into him, slurring the words, headed for sleep.

"Oh… I'm not watching me," Jack said. "Not at all."

He flipped James over onto his side, pulled him in and kissed him hard and then softer and then barely, until James was out, asleep in his arms.

Then Jack settled in, too, watching James, how his face was flushed and loose, an arm heavy over Jack's waist. He watched until his own eyes got heavy, and as he drifted off he realized Paris was officially just another place they'd been, and he couldn't wait to move on to whatever was next for them… together.

_*Finis*_


End file.
